What happened at last night’s Scottish leadership hustings?

Glasgow’s Emirates Arena hosted the second of Scottish Labour’s leadership hustings. The membership are being asked to choose between two Holyrood parliamentarians Kezia Dugdale and Ken MacIntosh for the top job, while it’s a three horse race for the Deputy’s post consisting of Gordon Matheson leader of the Glasgow City Council Labour Group, the MSP for North East Richard Baker and the former leader of Dunfermline Council now MSP for the area Alex Rowley.

In a heavily oversubscribed meeting of two hundred, Party stalwarts fired questions at the candidates after each had laid out their stall.

Leadership

Kezia Dugdale MSP framed the defeat within a time scale of years which may take as long to reverse. She said education should be at the heart of Labour’s core values and principles with power and wealth distributed to local councils and communities through progressive taxes. Dugdale wants to see more “issue” based campaigning in working for the hopes and aspirations of the electorate. There were murmurs of approval from the audience when she said the Party membership should re-establish its voice through the Branch and Constituency Labour Party structure once more giving the ordinary member an opportunity to have their voice heard at Conference.

Ken MacIntosh MSP opened with the radical proposal of breaking up and restructuring the Party machine in Scotland, which would include establishing a Chief Executive to replace the General Secretary post. He wants the Party to be friendly and forward looking especially in the field of campaigning, utilising the full range of social media to promote Labour’s programme while explaining how his own political philosophy is family based and rooted in his constituency. A great believer in life-long education he wants to reach out and broaden the appeal, working for a solidarity in which the traditional left/right arguments are obsolete.

Deputy leadership

Gordon Matheson would drive the Party towards change by opening up, inspiring and bringing in new blood to embrace activism at a more local level, including a trained organiser in every constituency. He could bring passion, heart and has a record on Glasgow City Council of which he is proud, seeing to fruition the Clyde Valley regeneration through the City Deal project, a collaboration of seven councils. Central to his role as Deputy, Matheson sees the post as the membership’s voice to the leader and wants to see community control of budgets as a way to empowerment.

Richard Baker MSP sees his role as promoting teamwork and building a united Party of change in which there is no scope for factions. He also wants the Party to reform at grass roots level with an energy which recognises the skills of the membership. Local campaigns should focus on schools, hospitals and the creation of jobs. This could be reinforced by giving local government more tools to do the job in the quest to tackle inequality. Cross party co-operation should not be ruled out in pursuing progressive issues within the distribution of local government funding.

Alex Rowley MSP wants the Party to be radical and confident with a clear vision of progressive politics which are left of centre. He brought in the historical reference of Keir Hardie’s belief in Home Rule and Rowley sees the constitutional question as central to the delivery of his bold vision which would not rule out working with the SNP through properly funded local government. Local activism would be encouraged by devolved budgets being managed through area committees. Rowley sees Labour as the Party of full employment and to be central in tackling inequality.

All the candidates were agreed that there is a force for change now being demanded to include a coherence of vision, the promotion of new talent and the devolving of power and funding away from Holyrood, to a more local level. How to engage the membership and the broader electorate is now at the top of the agenda as the Labour Party in Scotland seeks to be relevant once again.