Pat Kane (Glasgow, Scottish Futures): Wendy Alexander's unopposed coronation as the new leader of the Labour Party in Scotland is, as the Demos-associated political commentator Gerry Hassan says, something of a failure for the left in Scotland. But given the family connections to the very heart of the new Brown regime - her brother Douglas is Labour's general-election coordinator - will her ascendancy mean anything other than the enactment of Gordon's writ north of the border? Well, it depends whether you think that writ is quite as staunchly Unionist and no-change as voices like the current Scottish Secretary of State, Des Browne, might suggest.
In her official launch yesterday, Alexander performed some fascinating vocabulary twists, much pored over by the punditocracy. The old Labour slogan of "Scottish solutions for Scottish problems" became "Scottish solutions for Scottish aspirations", explicitly recognising how the optimistic, democratic-nationalist agenda of the SNP has tapped into a desire for positive politics, and how Labour failed when it tried to portray independence as a potential plagues-of-locusts disaster. More interestingly, in subsequent discussions Alexander pronounced herself "relaxed" about the repatriation of broadcasting and media to Scotland, an increase in fiscal autonomy for the Parliament, and other increased powers picked out by chapter two of the SNP Government's White Paper on Independence. Or at least, relaxed about the "national conversation" around these issues taking place.
As some have already noted, none of this will have been pronounced without the Eye of Sauron - sorry, Gordon Brown - having scanned the agenda first. So is this a further indication that Brown's ultimate stance towards an independence-oriented government in Scotland is to deploy the Lampedusa strategy: "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change"? There are doubts about the smart and abrasive Alexander's appeal to voters. But her recognition (as compared to the sore-loserdom of her predecessor, Jack McConnell) that an SNP government changes the landscape of policy for a Labour party in Scotland, is long overdue. Let the Wendyfication of Scottish Labour proceed.
