Corbyn urged to back a woman as Scottish leader
The party’s leader in Scotland had nowhere to go when faced by a Leftist agenda hatched in London
KEZIA DUGDALE must be replaced by a female candidate, Jeremy Corbyn has been told, amid a row over the party leader’s “woman problem”.
It follows reports that Ms Dugdale, who resigned as leader of the party in Scotland on Tuesday, was “forced out” by male politicians who support Mr Corbyn and want a Left-wing replacement and a pro-corbyn voice on the party’s ruling committee.
Harriet Harman called for the party “not to revert to men” after Ms Dugdale’s shock resignation, while a party source added: “Labour has had three women leaders in Scotland and all have been forced out by men”.
They reiterated concerns that Mr Corbyn has a “women problem” and would have been aware of the pressure put on Ms Dugdale to leave. This follows a row over appointments within Labour after Mr Corbyn chose a male deputy and male senior advisers.
Mr Corbyn’s allies succeeded in grinding down Ms Dugdale over an 18 month period, her friends said last night, claiming she had come under “constant attack”. The Corbyn camp’s demand for “unity at all costs” was the last straw, it was claimed, while his resurgence at the general election also meant she was “captive” to his Leftwing policy agenda. Ms Dugdale, 36, denied suggestions she had quit before being pushed by the Left wing. But her allies also pointed to criticism within Scottish Labour prompted by her decision to start dating an nationalist MSP.
Her sudden decision to quit with immediate effect instantly fired the starting gun on a leadership contest. However, two of the early favourites to succeed her as the fourth Scottish Labour leader in four years yesterday withdrew. Neil Findlay, Mr Corbyn’s closest ally in Scotland, was the first to confirm he would not be standing. He described suggestions that Corbyn supporters had pushed out Ms Dugdale as “utter garbage.”
Alex Rowley, another Corbyn ally and the party’s interim leader, later let it be known that he would not contest the leadership.
Aformer senior Labour minister summed up perfectly the predicament in which Kezia Dugdale found herself: “In shark infested waters, it’s not good to be out of your depth.” And out of her depth was precisely the situation of the leader of Scottish Labour thanks to the dramatic and ultra-leftist change that the Jeremy Corbyn revolution has wrought on both sides of the Cheviots.
The party of Gordon Brown, John Smith, Alistair Darling, John Reid and Douglas Alexander looks like it is heading Leftward at a now furious pace and, in spite of being its elected leader, there was nothing Dugdale could do about it: except resign.
The UK leader and his core group of Momentum/militant backers appear to have captured the once moderate soul of Scottish Labour, a party that had lost its way in the face of the SNP onslaught and seemed to have nothing to say of much relevance to the electorate – other than that it didn’t support independence.
Corbyn, by way of contrast, offered massive and radical change – full blooded socialism, red in tooth and claw, and even admitted that he could work with the nationalists against “Tory austerity”.
That last admission, made at the Edinburgh Book Festival last weekend, was perhaps the final humiliation for Dugdale who, in spite of her undoubted ability, has always seemed to most observers to be too nice a person for the nasty world of frontline politics.
Corbyn and his team appeared to think they should get all the credit for the fact that Scottish Labour, which Dugdale had led literally from the gutter after its near wipeout in 2015, gained six seats in the June general election. In their analysis the Corbynbacking Campaign for Socialism castigated Dugdale’s election tactics as being too obsessed with defeating the SNP instead of aping the successful Labour strategy adopted in England.
Neil Findlay, widely seen as the Scottish Parliament’s leading Corbyn “apostle”, has denied that there was any overt plot to oust Dugdale. However, it’s not being too cynical to suggest that they didn’t need an assassination when the leader had become a virtual prisoner of the Left.
Scottish Labour has fast returned to the position it was supposed to have shaken off – as a wholly owned subsidiary of London Labour. It fought this year’s election on the Corbyn platform of more taxes, more nationalisation and more public spending – a combination of policies that captured the imagination of many but which horrified others.
If Findlay sticks to his determination not to stand, one of the favourites to succeed as leader is Richard Leonard, a former trade union apparatchik turned MSP who refuses to talk to journalists from the “Boss’s Press”. Mind you, I don’t remember him ever saying anything worth reporting. Nobody expects him to take the party away from an ultra-socialist path.
All of this Leftward lurch is bad news for Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP but good news for Ruth Davidson’s Tories. In the former case, the more radical the Labour Party appears the more it’s likely to win back its traditional
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supporters from the nationalists in its one-time West of Scotland and Central Belt heartlands. And I can’t be the only one who reckons that it’s only a matter of time before Corbyn comes up with some form of words to dilute Labour’s current fierce opposition to Scottish independence.
Where do moderate Labour voters, who still believe in the UK, go then? Many voted Tory in June and it’s a certainty that La Davidson will be looking to increase her party’s appeal to them in the coming months.
Dugdale has not endeared herself to some of her supporters who are disappointed that she’s decided to cut and run with the Scottish Parliament due to resume after the summer recess next week. She claims that the Corbyn leadership is not her reason for going, but would she really be leaving if the pair saw eye to eye?
And what happens now in the camp of those supposed “big beast” moderates in the wider party who, by sticking with Corbyn no matter how much they loathe him, are giving him a wholly undeserved respectability? Will Dugdale’s sad departure give them cause to speak out at the direction their party is taking? Or will they merely shrug their shoulders as she heads for the door?