‘Debate and disagreement and are nothing to be feared’

Anas Sarwar has resigned as Scottish Labour leader. Shortly he will be appointed to the House of Lords and take a ministerial post in Andy Burnham’s new government. Despite his assertions that he would stay on as leader and carry the party into the next Holyrood election, to many this will come as little surprise. Whilst he could be forgiven for the 2021 election defeat, having only been in post for a few months, it never seemed too plausible that Scottish Labour members would forgive him a second consecutive election loss.

Scottish Labour now finds itself at a crossroads. Having just suffered a fifth Holyrood election defeat and its worst ever result, the party now has a chance to make the root and branch reform it desperately needs. But for this to happen, a real leadership contest is needed. Some in the party will warn against this. Contests are by nature divisive. Some will claim this is the last thing the party needs. Airing dirty laundry in public, especially when UK Labour has just elected a new leader and Prime Minister, will be dismissed as an indulgence that the Scottish public will not appreciate. 

READ MORE: How might a Scottish Labour leadership election work – and who might stand?

Naturally, speculation about Sarwar’s departure has been afoot since even before the May election. And although no Scottish Labour figure has been able to be drawn on an explicit endorsement, a few possible contenders have been mentioned by name. It is not the names themselves that should be of concern to Scottish Labour members. Rather, it is the suggestion that the prospective leader could face not a contest, but a coronation. This would be tantamount to the party signing its own death warrant. 

What Scottish Labour needs is an open contest, with as many voices as possible heard and a ballot of candidates with a genuinely diverse range of views on the future direction of the party. In 2021, Anas Sarwar and Monica Lennon fought a contest that managed to be both perfectly civil and healthily divisive, with each offering significantly different approaches and ideas. If a coronation ensues over the coming weeks, the new contender, whoever that may be, will not be adequately challenged. Many of those members already disenfranchised with the state of the party will recede further into the wings – or possibly leave the party altogether, as so many have done in recent years. 

Any calls for the party to ensure the swift election of a new leader should be shouted down. Suggestions that the party needs to quickly move on from the recent election defeat and begin working with the new Labour Prime Minister on the issues that matter to the people of Scotland should be looked upon with scepticism. For the fact is Scottish Labour will not get a fair hearing on the economy, health or education until it can rebuild trust with the electorate. 

Debate and disagreement and are nothing to be feared. For a party in terminal decline, they are to be welcomed! The new leader will have to face up to the very real fact that Scottish Labour cannot win power without first rebuilding trust with the independence voters it lost to the SNP in 2015. They will have to accept the fact, backed up by opinion polls and thousands of conversations on the doorsteps, that the party has a fundamental branding problem; that it is not seen as a sufficiently Scottish party. And above all, they will have to accept that the electoral hegemony they once enjoyed across swathes of Scotland, is fast becoming a distant memory. 

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