STENCH OF POLITICAL DEATH NOW LINGERS ON LEONARD

APHOTOGRAPH shared on Twitter on Friday afternoon provided a powerful visual metaphor. It showed a concert hall filled with row after row of empty seats. On each had been placed a copy of The Morning Star.

Could there be a more apt image for Labour in 2019 than the party-enabled delivery of a crackpot Communist newspaper to its members?

As the Scottish Labour faithful descended on Dundee’s Caird Hall for the annual party conference, it was hard not to note how the party’s fortunes have changed.

Fifteen years ago, Labour dominated the Scottish political landscape. It was frequently said that, in some parts of the country, Labour could stick a rosette on a monkey and it would get elected.

The Scottish Conservatives appeared to be a dying beast, their relevance dissipating with the passing of each generation, while the SNP was still on the sidelines, unable to muster the support of even a third of voters.

When you read the names of past Labour leaders you will, I’m confident, be able to recall moments when they made some kind of political impact.

You might not have agreed with Donald Dewar or Jack McConnell or Wendy Alexander but you would concede they made their mark on our national debate.

I wonder if you could say the same of Scottish Labour’s current leader, Richard Leonard?

Mr Leonard, a former trade unionist, is, without question, the most ineffectual political leader to have served since the dawn of devolution two decades ago.

He is drably loyal to UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and unwilling to try carving out a unique identity for the party in Scotland.

Scottish Labour leaders have for years struggled to defend themselves against the accusation that they do nothing more than run a branch office of the UK Party. Mr Leonard makes no such effort.

Almost two-thirds of Scots voted Remain in 2016’s EU referendum. When these voters, disappointed by the result, looked for a politician to articulate their dismay, their options were limited.

TORY leader Ruth Davidson may have campaigned to Remain but was committed to supporting the verdict of a UK-wide vote. Here was Labour’s chance to speak for most Scots. The opportunity was missed on former leader Kezia Dugdale’s watch. On that of Mr Leonard, there has been no attempt to rectify that mistake.

Instead, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is the voice of the Remain-backing masses. Labour, yet again, looks rather pointless.

Mr Leonard’s blind loyalty to Mr Corbyn means he has had little of significance to say on this most pressing issue. In fact, it was his predecessor, Ms Dugdale, who – freed from the constraints of leadership – first spoke in favour of a ‘people’s vote’, while Mr Leonard parroted the weak Corbyn line of the moment.

Mr Leonard’s seeming ambivalence on revisiting the EU question was apparent last week when Ms Dugdale accused him of censoring anti-Brexit remarks from Labour conference literature, and of insulting Labour’s two retiring MEPs after it emerged neither had been formally offered the chance to address delegates.

Mr Leonard’s spokesman insisted it was all a great misunderstanding. Of course it was.

One wonders if, even in a world in which he resembled a dynamic political leader with a vision, Mr Leonard would succeed.

It is difficult to see what Scottish Labour is for these days. Mr Corbyn’s Labour may be attractive to voters in England who yearn for a new ‘anti-establishment’ politics but that role is already filled here by the SNP.

The Nationalists have been in power for a dozen years but still manage to convince a substantial number of voters that they are radical outsiders.

What use is Scottish Labour to those who prefer a more moderate, centre-Left politics? There may still be Labour MSPs with such leanings but a great deal of the SNP’s ‘small c’ conservative members have this agenda, too.

And given the option, why wouldn’t you pick the brand that isn’t infested with anti-Semitism?

If you think ineptitude in dealing with anti-Semitism is a problem specifically for the Labour leadership in London, consider a decision by the party in Scotland to reject a motion from the branch in Eastwood, Renfrewshire, calling for all candidates to undergo diversity training.

Labour activists at the branch – which represents the party in an area home to half of Scotland’s Jewish community – wanted the party to affirm that ‘every necessary measure’ would be taken to drive bigotry out of the party.

Scottish Labour’s General Secretary said this was a matter for the UK party. What a ludicrous decision. The cancer of antiSemitism is eating away at Labour.

By yesterday morning, the General Secretary had written to members of the party’s executive committee outlining an agreement that all elected members and candidates would undergo diversity training.

Labour was dragged kicking and screaming to the correct decision in such a way that it allowed maximum reputational damage.

One explanation for reticence about debating anti-Semitism at the conference may be that many who joined the party in Scotland in order to elect Corbyn leader are, like their English counterparts, from the crank hard-Left, where conspiracy theories based on anti-Semitic tropes and a hatred of Israel are common.

Fifteen years ago, when Labour held power at every level of government across Scotland, the Conservative Party was considered to be beyond salvation. That same stench of political death now lingers around Scottish Labour.

Perhaps, like the Tories, the party might find its way back. But Scottish Labour – once dominated by big political beasts such as John Smith, Donald Dewar, Gordon Brown and Robin Cook – is now a party of nonentities with nothing to say. If the party ceased to exist, would anyone notice?