Well, it would be massively over-the-top on this occasion to repeat what I said about the Tories a few weeks ago. Labour haven't made a historic error - not that choosing Johann Lamont wasn't an error, but it's hard to pretend that the alternative would have been much better. There was no-one on the ballot paper who could have matched Alex Salmond's charisma (and that includes Admin, in spite of his own high opinion of himself), and neither was there anyone who really "got it" about where Labour have been going wrong. Macintosh perhaps came closest with his idea of dropping the word 'unionist' from the party lexicon, but I doubt there would have been much in the way of substance to complement the change of language.
And the same problem holds true of Lamont. OK, no-one can accuse her of concealing the fact that she's going to continue to conspire with the Tories to obstruct the Scottish people's aspirations for a more powerful parliament, but on non-constitutional matters she actually talked the talk today. For instance -
"Our one test will be what is in the interest of the people of Scotland, not what's in the interest of ourselves."
"I will reach out to people across Scotland who maybe never thought of themselves to be Labour..."
Now, does anyone think for a moment she's the person to do that? She has "core vote strategy leader" written all over her - and that strategy certainly worked a treat back in May.
Before this contest it seemed to some that Labour only needed one new leader, the leader of its North British branch. After this contest, it’s already clear that Labour needs two new leaders – a replacement for Ed Miliband and an urgent replacement for Johann Lamont. But who will succeed Miliband and Lamont and when?
ReplyDeleteLabour have carried on where they left off when they elected Gordon Brown as their leader, and if Labour remains stuck with Miliband and Lamont the same way that they were stuck with Brown, it’ll be time for the nats to take that champagne off ice come the referendum.
After David Cameron’s fit of Little England pique with Europe I thought to myself: how many more Christmas presents can Santa give to the SNP? After this North British branch result, it has to be said that Santa has been very very generous to the SNP this year? Suddenly, Iain Gray doesn’t look so bad now does he?
It turns out that in the combined electorate of MPs MSPs, and MEPs, NO-ONE voted for Admin (except himself).
ReplyDeleteYou owe me for cleaning my monitor from the coffee spray. "Highly successful" indeed. LOL
ReplyDelete