Dear All
Trouble is a bit like grief, when it comes, it hurts; the
Scottish Labour Party is in deep trouble, although they give the public
appearance of being confident, they are on a continual downward spiral.
What does a party need to work?
It needs an understanding of what I have blogged on for
years, an understanding of the political economy.
So, what is the political economy, the economy is based on people,
money and resources. At present, the Scottish Labour Party is going in the
wrong direction, Kezia Dugdale for reasons best known to her has made a lot of
mistakes, and she keeps making a lot of mistakes.
Here are some of the big ones in no order of preference:
1/ Failed to back Jeremy Corbyn as leader in post
2/ Failed to support Jeremy Corbyn in his leadership bid
3/ Failed to remain neutral during the US Presidential
election
4/ Failed to support Brexit
5/ Failed to understand that Trident must be supported by Scottish Labour
You could go and do a list on the minor ones but you would
end up nitpicking.
Political Parties rise and fall, that is the nature of
politics, some organisations reach and end date, however, it generally isn’t
seen as helpful when the leadership is accelerating the process.
People like to be associated with success, and the Scottish
Labour Party was a success story in terms of holding onto power, now the
downward spiral has started, a lot of “Labour” people have quietly disappeared.
Ask yourself this, where are all the big names in Scottish
Labour who sat in the Parliaments of Westminster and Holyrood now?
They have gone; they aren’t out pounding the streets for a
Labour victory week in week out, they aren’t contributing to the party in a
meaningful sense; they aren’t in the press doing set pieces on issues of the
day.
Scottish Labour cannot survive on 15 minutes of FMQs and a
few set piece setups promoting various organisations at the Scottish
Parliament.
Scottish Labour is too Holyrood focussed as a party because
that is where the leadership sits.
Kezia Dugdale has made a huge load of mistakes, but mistakes
as we all know are part of the learning process, and the process also involves
not repeating mistakes, when you don’t learn, you suffer.
People have walked away from Scottish Labour; I saw this as
a Labour activist doing the Holyrood 2016 campaign. It was a surprise to me how
few people wanted to support the campaign of Johann Lamont which only picked up in the last week, how few days the
Councillors and former MP put into this seat. I thought the Scottish Labour
Party would have a slick operation for campaigning on the ground, they didn’t.
Who would have thought that Kezia Dugdale would lose the
position as official leader of the opposition?
I did, and I blogged on it.
Just as people have walked away from the party along with
me, so has the cash given to the Scottish Labour Party!
Investing in a collapsing market is never a good idea unless
you know the market is about to turn, in Scottish Labour’s case, there is no
green shoots revival in sight.
Latest poll is 14%, this means 86% of Scots aren’t willing
to back a Labour Party in Scotland
which is going under the direction of Kezia Dugdale’s policies. I am not surprised
that Scottish Labour donations collapse in Dugdale's first year as leader. She
has spent too much time relying on the 15 minutes of FMQs as a platform, it is
an ineffective media, most Scots don’t turn in, and it is for all intensive
purposes worthless.
Clearly Scottish Labour cannot continue to suffer
catastrophic drops in donations because the party needs to go through a
revival, not just of policies but equally of people. The Blair faction control Scottish
Labour, they are the gate keepers but with donations continuing to fall, some
of the staff and party officers need to be removed.
Last year, the lack of cash severely hampered their ability
to fight the Holyrood election; in Pollok, they spent a pitiful amount on
leaflets and I am not sure if they even had a budget for media, or even thought
of the idea.
This week is the party conference in Perth , I got a thing asking me to go but as I
am standing as an independent, I really couldn’t attend, could I?
Figures published show that Kezia Dugdale’s first full year
as leader was the party’s worst for donations since 2009.
In 2015, the party had donations of just under £600,000.
In 2016 it was just over £100,000
Scottish Labour ended 2016 with a deficit of £104,000, and
the bad news continues as the party’s reserves also slumped below £160,000,
their lowest level since 2003.
The numbers are bad, but what is equally bad is the denial
of where the blame lies, a Labour source stated:
"Donations to the party across the entire UK have dried
up since Jeremy Corbyn became leader. Scottish Labour is no different.
People are not donating while Jeremy is leader."
I don’t believe that Jeremy Corbyn is the reason for the
continual decline in donations to Scottish Labour, nor do I believe that the
rot started with him in Scotland .
Scottish Labour’s problems had festered for years as Jim Murphy aptly mentioned
when he took over as Leader in Scotland .
The real reason which Scottish Labour has to address, is
their failure to develop not just the organisation but the policies, but they
want to be autonomous and they effectively got their wish, we now see that they
are having ‘start up’ problems.
The party’s latest accounts, which cover the year to 31
December 2016, show that the party’s slide in the polls mirrors a massive
deterioration in its finances. It also makes it pretty clear that a sharp loss
of confidence among donors in the party in Scotland under Ms Dugdale and her
deputy Alex Rowley watch is really their fault.
If it wasn’t for the polling and sharing of resources by the
UK Party, then the situation would be even worse for Scottish Labour than it is
at present.
It is time that Scottish Labour started producing policies
at Conferences and have a rolling agenda for Government in waiting.
Do you know what Scottish Labour stands for?
No?
Join the club; you are in the same boat as the membership,
not just the rank and file, even senior people who have been candidates!
A Scottish Labour spokesperson said:
“Every Labour politician who is elected fights for working
people”.
That isn’t true, and by just trotting out this patronising
statement, they insult the intelligence of the people of Scotland which
is why they have been wiped out in the last two major elections.
Why did people vote to get rid of Scottish Labour?
Because they weren’t representing ordinary people, the
tipping point was reached, as one Labour report stated, there isn’t a core vote
anymore for the Labour Party.
Kezia Dugdale needs a narrative, not a series of short term
populist statements and not allowing the status quo to continue of people
failing to produce, she needs to get better activists, and she needs policies to
sell on the doorstep and not rhetoric. The Scottish Labour Party has traded off
the legacy of the political giants of the past whop created the welfare state
and the NHS, but these people are gone, and what replaced them aren’t Nye Bevan
or John Smith figures.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at 
1 comment:
A Scottish Labour spokesperson said:
“Every Labour politician who is elected fights against working people”
lie@bour are scum, if they had power, the unemployed would be in work camps.
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