Deflating, predictable ... just like a Lib Dem conference

SHE began on a note of optimism. The Scottish Labour Party, said Kezia Dugdale, had renewed itself. It had welcomed thousands of new members, it had found new candidates, and it had a new vision to take to the country. If only Miss Dugdale could create a new electorate, she might yet storm to victory in May’s Scottish parliament elections.

But, of course, leaders are expected to rally the troops and so, addressing a skimpy oneday Scottish Labour conference in Glasgow yesterday, Miss Dugdale refused to write off the possibility that her party could return to government just a few weeks from now.

She accused the First Minister of arrogance in her assumption that the SNP would win a third term in power – wouldn’t it be better if Labour Ministers were in Government, making the changes Scotland needs? Naturally, those in attendance applauded wildly.

But the power of their collective desire will not be sufficient to prevent another SNP landslide. Last weekend, the SNP met for two days at the SECC on the banks of the Clyde. Yesterday, Scottish Labour met for just one day in the far smaller Glasgow Science Centre on the other side of the river.

The SNP has firmly established itself on Labour’s ideological territory while building a degree of popular support unseen in British politics. Meanwhile Scottish Labour has seen its popularity plummet as it struggles to seem relevant.

AND so Miss Dugdale’s evocation of a Labourled Scottish Government was bleakly comical. The list of life’s certainties could safely be appended to read ‘death, taxes, and Labour defeat in the 2016 Holyrood election’.

Such is Labour’s malaise that it probably mattered very little what Miss Dugdale said yesterday. She has a small core support to keep happy but many voters who have left Labour for the Nationalists now look at their old party with contempt.

Opinion polls show the SNP racing towards a third consecutive election victory. Yesterday’s Scottish Labour conference seemed about as important as its Liberal Democrat counterpart.

There was some substance to the speech: Labour would build new council houses, invest in schools, and raise standards in the NHS. But funding all this is the problem, leading Miss Dugdale yesterday to reiterate her proposal to raise income tax.

Bold is the politician rejected by the electorate who believes the way to regain affection is to promise higher taxation. The Scottish Labour leader was on safer ground explaining why she rejects nationalism.

Where one is born, she said, is an accident of birth. She came into politics to make sure that where someone was born didn’t matter. She did not love the ‘idea’ of Scotland but the people.

Then she muttered some sweet nothings about ‘the wonderful, kind, funny, thrawn, friendly people who make up the community of this great nation’.

This was in danger of veering into the sort of emetic sentimentality that permeates too much of our political debate. But there was a sting to come – for the SNP, Scotland was just a word which it always put first, before the people.

Miss Dugdale, whose breathless delivery undermined the impact of a few decent lines, told delegates that the Nicola Sturgeon she first saw campaigning for office 20 years ago would not have looked at the Scotland she has now created and been satisfied.

This may well be the case, but I daresay Miss Sturgeon looks at the opinion polls and is satisfied.

Miss Dugdale proceeded to list a number of well-aired examples of the SNP reneging on promises. Student debt, meant to be abolished, has doubled. Class sizes due to be cut have got larger. School budgets, scheduled to soar, have instead fallen.

But the Scottish Labour leader doesn’t do righteous indignation and so this all sounded like a reprimand from a weary teacher: ‘I’m not angry with you, Nicola. I’m just disappointed.’

The Scottish Labour Party does have a way back to power, but it requires the SNP to do something so catastrophically foolish or immoral that the electorate recoils in horror. There is no way back for Labour until the nationalists screw up.

BUT Miss Dugdale can thank Heaven for one small mercy. Her party’s UK leader Jeremy Corbyn did not come to Glasgow. Instead, Jez sent a video message wishing everyone well. Kez has a hard enough job ahead persuading centrist Scots voters to leave the SNP or Ruth Davidson’s resurgent Scottish Conservatives without a reminder of the absolute chaos engulfing her party at a UK level.

Last weekend, Nicola Sturgeon walked offstage after delivering her SNP conference speech, safe in the knowledge that she will be First Minister after May’s election. Yesterday, Kezia Dugdale left the stage knowing that she has a fight in her hands to stop the Conservatives knocking Labour into third place.

In the meantime, that new electorate shows no sign of turning up.