HAMISH MACDONELL THE VOICE OF SCOTTISH POLITICS Is Labour aware it’s hanging on by its fingertips?
THERE is a scene in the film Cliffhanger when Sylvester Stallone is clinging to a ledge by his fingertips, with nothing to stop him falling to his death except sheer cussed will. Walking around the Scottish Labour conference in Perth this weekend, I presumed I would see the same fire of determination in the eyes of the activists that Stallone showed as he wrestled his way back to the safety.
After all, this is a party hanging on by its fingertips, having lost the trust of all but the most committed or blinkered voters. But no. Scottish Labour members seemed resigned to going quietly into political oblivion with hardly a murmur, let alone a fight.
The impression they gave was of a party going through the motions – quite literally, as dull and tedious speaker followed dull and tedious speaker talking to motions of utter irrelevance.
The worst thing was they didn’t seem to realise it.
Two motions called on the party to defend council jobs in the face of cuts – despite the fact a number of Labour local authorities have decided there is enough money to keep the council tax freeze in place.
One motion called for partnationalisation of the North Sea oil industry, putting forward the frankly barmy idea of using taxpayers’ money to bail out multi-billion-pound corporations to take over useless oil platforms and wait for a mythical upturn in fortunes.
Another called for the nationalisation of Scot Rail, though everybody knows that will do nothing to solve the problems.
One motion, incredibly, called for a working party to investigate the spread of robots in the workforce.
All through, there were clarion calls to defend the working class – from a platform in front of a hall filled with well-fed trade union officials on expenses and career politicians.
Talk about out of touch. The world has changed, politics has changed – and yet Scottish Labour seemed content to operate in a little bubble of its own self-contentment, apparently unaware of how increasingly irrelevant it has become.
The figures don’t lie. Labour is bumping along at 14 per cent of the vote ahead of the council elections in May.
Cash reserves are at their lowest since 2003 and donations are at their lowest since 2009. The amount raised from donors dropped from nearly £600,000 in 2015 to just over £100,000 a year later. Labour is being out-spent by the Tories and the SNP and just doesn’t have the money to make a decent fist of this year’s council elections, let alone take on an expensive independence referendum campaign.
If you were able to go back to the late 1990s, or even the early years of this century, and ask Scottish Labour leaders then what they would expect to see at a conference with the party on its knees, as it is now, what would they reply?
They would have expected a conference in near panic, focused purely and completely on the most pressing issue of getting back to power. The party would be driven to raise money, to fight, to concentrate on that to the exclusion of all else. It would be a party in a frenzy.
What they would not have expected is what was going on in Perth this weekend, where a party out of touch with the voters seemed happier to talk about its own arcane rules than go out and fight.
The real reason most Labour delegates cannot see the crisis is because the party’s downward spiral has been so gradual and so relentless. Like a frog in water brought slowly to the boil, they haven’t noticed how hot the water around them has become.
Like that frog, many will no doubt sit there until the water boils and their party is finished.
IT really is as bad as that. Any party would struggle to cope with the slide Scottish Labour has endured. Once you start losing donations, it becomes hard to get others to step into the breach. Once you start losing elections, it is hard to get people to canvass.
Once you start looking tired, dated and out of touch, it is incredibly difficult to appear fresh and modern again.
Labour has done it before, after Tony Blair took charge in 1994 and wrenched the party back on track. The donors and the activists returned.
Alex Salmond did it with the SNP in 2004, appealing to new supporters and donors.
But in both these cases, the rebuilding took someone strong, with the will to change their party to make it electable.
Scottish Labour’s tragedy is that it doesn’t seem to recognise the problem, let alone appreciate what is needed to solve it.