New Scots leadership team ‘will work with whoever wins contest’
SCOTTISH Labour’s new leadership team has vowed to work closely with Jeremy Corbyn if he seizes control of the party and sends it lurching to the Left.
Kezia Dugdale, who was elected Scottish party leader at the weekend with 72 per cent of the vote, said Mr Corbyn’s ‘big ideas’ are exciting the country.
Her newly- elected deputy, Left-winger Alex Rowley, said there is a ‘very positive debate’ within the Labour Party and said he was ‘really sad’ that colleagues who nominated Mr Corbyn have since described themselves as ‘morons’.
Mr Rowley added there should be an ‘open discussion’ about all forms of further devolution, including the ‘full fiscal autonomy’ favoured by the SNP that would all but end the Union.
In contrast, shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray has said he is unsure he could continue in his role if Mr Corbyn wins, as revealed in Saturday’s Scottish Daily Mail.
The comments from the new Scottish leadership team came as Britain’s leading elections expert, Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University, said a ‘move to the Left of the kind being offered by Jeremy Corbyn is precisely what Labour requires north of the Border’.
He explained: ‘The SNP’s rise has denuded the Labour Party of much of the support of those on the Left in Scotland, and left the party over-reliant on those in the centre.’
Speaking to j ournalists in Edinburgh on her first full day in the job, 33-year-old Miss Dugdale – MSP for Lothian – said she had a very ‘ enjoyable’ conversation with Mr Corbyn last week. ‘It was very encouraging,’ she said. ‘I’m committed to working with whoever wins the UK-wide leadership contest, I can work with all of them.
‘My approach is to unite the party and the way to do that is to respect the democratic result of any process.’
Mr Rowley, MSP for Cowdenbeath in Fife and former election agent for Gordon Brown, said: ‘It’s our role – our duty – to work with whoever the leader is.’
He added: ‘We’re having a very positive debate, and I welcome that. I was really sad when I heard Margaret Beckett say that she was a moron for having nominated Corbyn.’
Neither politician has revealed who they will be voting for, but Mr Rowley said he was not convinced by the arguments of Blairite candidate Liz Kendall.
Commenting on whether he would stay as shadow Scottish secretary if Mr Corbyn wins, Mr Murray – who represents Edinburgh South and is Scotland’s only Labour MP – said: ‘I can’t commit to that one way or another because I’ve never had a conversation with [Mr Corbyn] about what his programme is.
‘I’ve very, very uncomfortable with what he’s said about the IRA and those kind of issues – I don’t think that’s something I want to be involved in.’