We need a long hard look at what Scotland under Labour should look like

By James Mills / @jamesmills1984

A political hero of mine is the great late Donald Dewar, who once said “Cynicism, together with unrealistic expectation, are the two great bugbears of politics.” These are words that ring in my ears after last week’s results in Scotland sink in.

I have lived and worked for the majority of my adult life in Scotland. I have worked at the Scottish Parliament and now work for a Glasgow MP. Although a Londoner by birth I have a deep affection for Scotland. I’m devastaed by the results. Close friends and colleagues who have worked very hard will feel very down this weekend but even more depressing is not just another term of the SNP, but one with a parliamentary majority.

The re-emergence on this campaign of the SNP is something some of us involved in Scottish politics have long feared could happen even when we were high in the polls. It is not just Labour’s fault however – this was a loss for all unionist parties. For a long time unionist parties have not taken Scottish politics as seriously as they should have. For the SNP this is a different story. While unionist parties viewed Holyrood and devolved politics as the second tier of politics below Westminster, the SNP view things differently – this is their end goal. Alex Salmond stood down from his Westminster seat to focus purely on Holyrood politics for this very reason

Labour in contrast at Holyrood have seen the loss of excellent politicians like Margaret Curran and Cathy Jamieson who both moved to Westminster; and Wendy Alexander, Jack McConnell and George Foulkes who stood down at this election. At the same time Scottish Labour has lost Westminster heavyweights such as John Reid, Des Browne, and Adam Ingram. Although Westminster has seen them replaced with some fresh faces as well as those from Holyrood – nothing has headed in the other direction.

Could you imagine any political party sustaining such huge losses in stature and experience without any knock on effects? Things will be made worse still, with the loss of Andy Kerr and Tom McCabe

There is clearly a skills gap that needs shoring up. But where are the new recruits in Scottish Labour to come from?

I’t is too simplistic to put all of the blame on Iain Gray. It also gives too much credit to Alex Salmond and ignores the strength and depth he has in some of his SNP colleagues such as Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney.

We do need heavyweights to return and take on Salmond – and not just one but a few. The legendary father of devolution, Donald Dewar, stood down from his Anniesland seat to lead the Scottish Labour party at Holyrood. He died sadly, suddenly and un-expectedly but was replaced by Henry McLeish another experienced former MP who had left Westminster for Holyrood at the same time.

Hopefully some of the unknown fresh faces on our Labour lists who as a consequence of our losses in the constituency section unexpectedly find themselves MSPs, can provide some much needed supplies. But, long-term we also need some big players to build a team around.

Furthermore, if there was a lack of strength and depth in our politicians then this was matched by one in policy too.

Unlike Westminster there is a gap in the market for think tanks in Scotland. For example, I haven’t seen a single report by any major Labour-affiliated think tank on Scottish policy in years (if ever), something I have mentioned before but has fallen on death ears. There are a couple of Scottish based non-party affiliated think tanks but nothing is coming out of main Labour policy thinkers on Scotland.

This is something from the think tank point of view that I have always thought was an open goal on their side, as surely the chance to have a sway over policy direction at a devolved level will see its acceptance at national level. One just has to look at policies such as the smoking ban to see how polices developed in Scotland have been taken up elsewhere in the UK.

But that is just one small angle of policy development; the Future Jobs Fund for example came from a councillor not a wonk. Also, Glasgow city Council for example was the first trail blazers to instigate a living wage (long before London).

The greater malaise stems from an inability to define ourselves in a Scottish context. This showed in this election, our top policies were a Scottish Future Jobs Fund and a National Care Service. This may sound familiar. That’s because they were in the UK Labour manifesto at the national election last year too. It would be going too far to say we fought this election on the same policies as the general election, but it’s hard to hide the similarities. Don’t get me wrong, they are all noble policies and I support them all, but it’s not exactly reinventing the wheel. We could have at the very least re-branded them, because putting the word Scottish in front of something doesn’t make it sound completely different and unique. Yet it’s not just fresh ideas we need, but also well presented ideas that allow you to convey a message and a vision.

Nevertheless, there is the crux of the problem and why we turned our guns on the coalition in London to begin with rather than the Nats in Edinburgh – we simply didn’t know what we wanted to do with power. Then when we finally woke up to this and went after the record of the SNP we did it so late that it failed to resonate and allowed the SNP the room to turn the election into one based on style rather than substance.

Now is the time to start to rebuild, but we need to first take a long hard look at ourselves and decide upon what the blueprints for what we want to build.

Above all, cynicism and unrealistic expectations should never again appear to be guiding us as a party. Or we will face more terrible Friday mornings like last week.

For a full version of this article you can read James’s blog here.