Monday, September 4, 2017

Can a Leonard change Labour's spots?

We've all been having tremendous fun over the last week with the almost comical obscurity of Richard Leonard, a man who somehow stands on the brink of becoming leader of the third-largest party in the Scottish Parliament, in spite of the fact that nobody seems to know anything about him.  Ever since the leadership election was triggered, I've been trying to find out personal details as basic as what age he is, and have so far drawn a blank.  But we mustn't lose sight of the bigger picture here.  I entirely stand by what I said on Twitter the other day -

"A rational party would hear the news that Anas Sarwar is standing for leader, and think 'OK, we must elect whoever stands against him'."

It looks like that will mean electing Leonard, and actually, Labour could probably do worse.  At least he's relatively articulate and isn't another dreary Blairite clone.  He does seem to be hopelessly stuck in the 1950s as far as Scottish identity and constitutional politics are concerned, but I suspect much the same is true of just about every other leading Scottish Labour figure as well.  Because he's a Corbynite, it's doubtless only a matter of time before Owen Jones declares "the SNP should FEAR him", and there may be a tiny grain of truth in that in the sense that the SNP will be disappointed if Labour fail to make their customary mistake of electing the weakest candidate.  (However, neither Leonard nor Sarwar are in remotely the same class as Nicola Sturgeon, or even Ruth Davidson for that matter, and assuming this is the last leadership election before 2021, it's suddenly very hard to imagine Labour posing much of a threat at the next Holyrood election.)

Is there any case at all to be made that Leonard could end up doing even worse than Sarwar would have done?  In a rather ugly development, the Labour "moderates" are already zeroing in on Leonard's English accent as a potential issue, and I suspect clueless metrosplainers in the London media will be along any moment now to "warn" that the SNP will make hay with Leonard's Englishness.  In reality, of course, nothing could be further from the truth - the SNP's vision for Scotland is of a country where there is no barrier to someone like Leonard holding the highest office.  But, there again, the SNP do not control the prejudices of ordinary voters.  The good news for Leonard is that the last time Scotland had political leaders with English accents (Malcolm Bruce and Ian Lang), they achieved tolerably good election results in the context of the period.  It's conceivable that a Labour leader might face a slightly greater handicap, given that a successful Labour party is more reliant on working-class votes than either the Lib Dems or the Tories.  But I doubt if it would be the enormous problem that some people are rather conveniently suggesting.

No, I think the bigger issue is that Leonard's left-wing credentials could herald the beginning of the end of the informal unionist alliance that harmed the SNP in June.  We've begun to take it as read that the first priority of unionist voters will always be to keep the SNP out, but that could rapidly change if Tory supporters start to feel (rightly or wrongly) that a Corbyn premiership is a more immediate threat than an independent Scotland.  In this year's election, even leaving aside the fact that a Labour victory seemed an extremely remote prospect, Tories in Scotland who voted tactically for Labour could tell themselves that they weren't 'really' voting for Corbyn, because Scottish Labour was still controlled by 'moderates' like Dugdale and Sarwar.  It's a stretch to imagine that a Leonard leadership will result in those people doing a 180 degree turn and tactically voting for the SNP to keep Corbyn out, but they may well just revert to their natural home of the Tories, thus making it a little easier for the SNP to hold seats in former Labour heartlands.

22 comments:

  1. Think Leonard would be a good choice for Labour , more so than Sarwar , who has virtually nothing to say about anything . Have you seen Sarwar in any of his debates , they are cringe worthy . Leonard will take the party to the left , that is his politics , and that is Corbyn's politics . Leonard thinks that Labour in Scotland would have taken a lot more seats from the SNP if the party had pushed the Corbyn bounce a lot more instead of the constitution .We will then have a hard right ,a hard left and the SNP in the middle . That will give us a truer picture of politics in Scotland .

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  2. Having gone through most results seat by seat, I have to point out that outside Edinburgh South, the evidence for Labour being the net beneficiary of Tory tactical voters is very slim. While there are several seats where the obverse holds true.

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    1. I don't agree with that. With Edinburgh South there's something very obvious that happened on an epic scale. Elsewhere it was more subtle, and disguised by the fact that the Tory vote was going up sharply across the board. The question is whether the Tory vote would have gone up even more in SNP-Labour seats without unionist tactical voting, and in many cases it may well have done.

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    2. Edinburgh was the most heavily pro remain city in the UK, or certainly one of them. So you would expect a strong SNP / Lib Dem showing. But in Edinburgh South Labour - a pro brexit party - got an absolute majority of the votes.

      Brexit simply not that important to Scots?

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    3. Edinburgh South MP is Ian Murray who is a stalwart anti-Brexit MP voted agaibst triggering of article 50. So SNP in Edinburgh South is unlilely to benefit from any unionist pro EU voters.

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  3. Whoever fronts the Scottish accounting agency of the UKLabour party, I don't care. It makes no difference to the fact that they are a branch, takie their orders from London Labour, and lie through their teeth about the SNP. Not only that the Labour party take SNP policy and pretend it is theirs. while voting with the tories or abstaining on Westmonster votes on matters which devastate the lives of our most vulnerable. Labour, wherever they are are an absolute disgrace.

    When they were at the helm at Holyrood they sent back more than a billion £s to Westmonster, not able to find 'anything to spend it on in Scotland'. They opposed the new bridge crucially important to Scotland's infrastructure.

    They oppse the SNP, not the disgusting Tories, with their bigots and extreme cruelty against the poor, sick, disabled and vulnerable. Where the SNP in contrast, who are not perfect, but they at least work in the interests of Scotland and Scotland's people.

    No thanks, Labour branch in Scotland will always look after themselves, taking seats at the HoL's at £300 a day renumeration, while stepping on and keeping Scotland poor.

    They are a disgrace.

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  4. "the last time Scotland had political leaders with English accents (Malcolm Bruce and Ian Lang"

    News to me. So far as I am aware both of those are Scots and have Scottish accents albeit tainted by trying to imitate (badly) the SE English "o"(eeow)pronunciation, like many others in Scotland. Leonard is an English trying to speak with a Scottish accent.

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    1. They're Scots, certainly, but on what planet do they have Scottish accents?

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    2. Probably mine. Because I talk like them and in England everone knows I'm a Scot as soon as I speak.

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    3. You sound like both Malcolm Bruce and Ian Lang? That's quite impressive - they sound totally different to me! Maybe my ear is immune to certain subtleties, but I cannot hear a trace of Scottish in Ian Lang's accent. They were both educated in England (indeed Bruce was born there), so it's entirely natural that they speak with English accents.

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    4. Probably true that like many Scots, you are "immune to certain subtleties", because most people I meet in Scotland (Northern England) think I am English. But they don't in SE England. By the way I don't use the affected "o" as I think it sounds daft in a Scot.

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    5. The accent should be irrelevant. The nationality and birthplace should be irrelevant. But we all know it wont be. If we ever get round to indyref2 I fully expect this poor man to be given dog's abuse. Picture Jim Murphy on his soapbox tour only with an English accent. That'll cause more bother than a North Korean nuke test in Alaska.

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  5. Whoever it is,their tenure will be short but probably not sweet.

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    1. I think if anything demonstrates more clearly that this is a branch office position,it is the frequency with which they keep changing the manager.
      This would not be tolerated at HQ.

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  6. Challenge accepted!
    Five minutes later the provisional results are in.
    Richard Leonard born January 1962. Buckrose district of East Yorkshire. Pretty sure his wife's name is Karen who has a son from a former marriage.
    Any more challenges?

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    1. Yes - tell me where you got that information.

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    2. Yes to more challenges?
      Or are you challenging me about where I got the info?
      I'd prefer the first option!

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    3. Alternatively you could have just answered the question. It was pretty straightforward.

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  7. It seems unlikely the next labour leader will still be in charge come '21.

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  8. I don't know anything about Richard Leonard other than his name, and to be perfectly honest, I can't be bothered trying to find out. Given that so many people have been leader of the Branch in Holyrood, wouldn't it be lovely to give everyone a go?

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  9. The nats have to hope that Sarwar wins; Leonard is a n unknown quantity and can get tyhe benefit of the doubt, but everybody knows what Sarwar is like.

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