Just as British Labour is gearing itself up as best as it can for the forthcoming election, without money, resources or much hope - the Scottish Labour Party is doing the same. The attack lines are being drawn and the old battle cries dusted off and rehearsed.
The Monday of Labour Party Conference saw addresses from Jim Murphy, Scottish Secretary of State, and Iain Gray, technically, ‘Leader of the Labour Group of the Scottish Parliament' lay out the ground of Labour versus Conservative and the supposed irrelevance of the SNP in the forthcoming Westminster elections.
Murphy's address reflected his part reflective, part fighting talk, part gallows humour that he has been showing these last few months, a mood that does allow you on some level to make the best of a bad situation. Murphy has survived three times in a once Tory and heavily marginal seat - East Renfrewshire (current Labour majority 6,657) and proclaimed 'I quite enjoy being the underdog', in Mandelson style - only with a bit more conviction.
For Murphy, the choice at the next election was between Labour and Conservatives with the SNP ‘a sideshow'. He claimed that Iain Gray was a ‘brilliant leader', a line he has had to constantly recite in the last few days, illustrating the predicament Gray is in. He dismissed as ‘nonsense', concerns over Gray's non-existent profile in Scotland, which wasn't aided by Gray's admission in a Scotsman interview earlier in the month that 'Scots still don't know who I am'.
Gray in his own address attacked Alex Salmond, his SNP government and the idea of an independent referendum, claiming that Salmond has ‘no mandate, no majority and no shame'.
This is the sort of typical vituperative language Gray has used about the SNP and in particular, personally about Salmond since becoming leader. It has had little political effect, beyond to underline the animosity Gray feels for Salmond and the wider lack of a Scottish Labour strategy to combat the Nationalists.
Typical of this sort of approach he claimed that ‘the SNP are not a government, they are a campaign', and then laid out a Labour policy change on an independence referendum without signalling it as a policy change.
Gray said:
The day may well come when the people of Scotland want a referendum to settle their constitutional future once and for all, but not in the midst of a recession and not on a question rigged and fixed by the SNP.
This is charitably the fifth policy position of Scottish Labour on the independence question in two years. First, they were against it. Then they were bounced into supporting it by Wendy Alexander with Gordon Brown initially in favour, then unsure, and finally against. Then they officially weren't sure. The Gray leadership then took them back to being against a vote, but now it has moved again.
The current position of being against a vote not on principle, but expediency of timing and the Nats having the temerity to decide the vote hardly looks a stable position, and the issue will be how long it will be party policy before we are on to the sixth policy.
Scottish Labour illustrated the depths of a crisis it is in - in terms of identity, strategy, positioning and future prospects after the Westminster elections in the run-up to the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections. Murphy and Gray stood on Brighton beach, draped in a saltire, supposedly according to press briefings the new symbol of the party north of the border.
The challenge the Scottish party faces was evident in a Compass publication, 'The Last Labour Government' which polled on voting intentions in a forthcoming independence vote. This found only 31% in favour of independence and 53% against, but a whooping 34% of Scots becoming more favourable to independence with the prospect of a Tory Government.
This is the major faultline of Scottish politics. The Scots at the moment show little sign of being pro-independence, but they don't want to see the return of a Tory Government with ‘no Scottish mandate', no Cameron bounce north of the border, and with a couple of MPs to show its paltry support. This is Alex Salmond's hope and Scottish Labour's fear, future and predicament.
Comments
It was quite a nasty speech from Iain Gray. Conflating the Tories alliance with far right groups in Europe with their occasional support of the SNP in Holyrood and his claim that the SNP has no mandate. He's obviously still in denial about the relative numbers of SNP and Labour MSP's in the Parliament.
He then implied that Brandon Muir would not have been killed by the toddlers mother's boyfriend under a Labour Government. Nasty stuff but hey, he's Labour.
His bitterness about his position as having no official or party power is clear with his repeated phrase, "That is what happens when Labour loses power."
The Murphy and Gray double act shows why Labour in Scotland is rudderless, not because they don't have a helmsman, but because they don't have an organisation to steer.
The previous Leaders of the Labour MSP's in Holyrood had authority within the Labour party based soley on their position as First Minister of Scotland. First Alexander and now Gray have discovered that without the authority derived from the post of First Minister they have no authority within the Labour Party outside the doors of the Scottish Parliament.
The post of Scottish Secretary was rescued from the job share it had fallen into in order to give Jim Murphy authority within Scotland as a surrogate First Minister and as a surrogate leader of Labour in Scotland which would continue the illusion of a Scottish Labour Party.
When as the polls indicate the Tories gain power in Westminster then Murpy will find himself in exactly the same situation as Gray. Without power and position within Labour.
Iain Gray said in the Scotsman that,
His speech was just a bitter rant against the SNP with no clear vision of what Labour has to offer, not because he can't articulate it but because Labour has no vision.
Thanks for this Doug.
I think you can get away with a lot with a certain style and bonhomie – and the Murphy and Gray approaches show fundamental differences in both content and style.
Gray really shows how Labour cant get/accept the rationale of the Nationalists and displays consistently in his language a pathological and for Labour disabling hatred of the Nats. First rule of conflict: empathise with your enemy and never dehumanise them, or you are heading to disaster.
I have also followed your comments on Tom Gallacher’s writings on the SNP and Scottish nationalism which show how a disappointed leftwing view of the world can spill over into paranoia and xenophobia and will be doing a posting on this latter in the week.
According to Brian Taylor, Gray also said that one of his conditions that would need to be met before he would support a referendum was that it would have to decide the issue once and for all. When you add this to everything else the behaviour of Murphy and Gray appears to be a reaction to the perceived threat of Salmond setting the agenda.
Labour may have no positive message for Scotland on the constitution but they do appear to have a strategy in three parts: 1) to project themselves as just as Scottish as the SNP, not ruling out a referendum can be seen as part of that. 2) through their double act, trying to showcase an idealised partnership between Scotland and London and 3) above all else, using negative campaigning as they did to effect in Glenrothies.
"...the wording of the question Labour would be campaigning for – "Do you wish that Scotland remains part of the United Kingdom: yes or no?" "
Well, they will have to do something about that wording as it betrays constitutional ignorance and if the SNP trade on one thing, it is that they are a competent government and they garner votes from non-independence supporters on that alone.
The United Kingdom is the union of England and Scotland. It says so in the Act of Union thus :
"Article I
That the two Kingdoms of England and Scotland shall upon the first day of May, which shall be in the year one thousand seven hundred and seven, and forever after, be united into one Kingdom by the name of Great Britain; and that the ensigns armorial of the said United Kingdom be such as Her Majesty shall appoint, and the crosses of St George and St Andrew be conjoined in such manner as Her Majesty shall think fit, and used in all flags, banners, standards, and ensigns, both at sea and land. "
thus one cannot "leave" it , only end it.
Reference to "kingdom" raises the whole topic of monarchy/republic which is essentially a separate argument and can only confuse the issue.
A better phrasing might be
Do you wish that Scotland remains in Union with England ?
Of course, there are increasing calls for a concurrent referendum in England in which the question might be:
Do you wish that England remains in Union with Scotland ?
I wouldn't lay bets on the English answering in the affirmative.
It is not logical that Scotland can "leave"
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