Kezia Dugdale: if Labour doesn't change its dead in Scotland

No matter how hard she tries, she has an impossible job. That’s the accepted wisdom about the new Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale, 33, who has enjoyed a rather meteoric rise. Her party’s sixth leader in eight years, Dugdale is tasked with the unenviable job of finding a solution to Labour's electoral woes in Scotland. Once the dominant political force north of the border, the party's strongholds were swept away by the SNP tsunami on 7th May. Now, the polls suggest that a similar fate lies in store at next year’s Scottish parliament elections. There are even rumours the much-reviled Tories might fare better. Is this talented but inexperienced politician, who is not scared to express her admiration for the Blair era, the saviour that Scottish Labour needs?

As I’m on my way to meet Dugdale, or Kez as friends and colleagues call her, in a fashionable Edinburgh cafe, my mother calls to inform me that she was at school in Aberdeenshire with Kezia’s mother, who she remembers as a “bit of a sophisticate”. There was an incident involving a Waldorf Salad. I share the story with Dugdale who laughs heartily, and I feel myself instantly warm to her. She’s approachable—although there are flashes of the steely determination that has propelled her from a mere MSP to party leader in just over four years. Dugdale, who only became Jim Murphy’s deputy last December, admits that at times she feels as if her political career is on “fast forward”.

The ease of her victory in this summer’s Scottish Labour leadership election against Holyrood veteran Ken Mackintosh, surprised even her. She took 72 per cent of the vote and with it a mandate to shake new life into her party. Earlier this month, she told The Guardian that if Jeremy Corbyn won the party's UK leadership election it would be left “carping from the sidelines”, but since being elected has mellowed her position.

There is the suggestion that a Corbyn victory could help the party in its fight back against the Scottish National Party, regaining the support of those who possibly voted No in the referendum, but supported populist left-wing policies such as opposition to austerity and Trident renewal, which tend to resonate with younger voters. “I wouldn’t like to over represent it but [a Corbyn victory] would be helpful, not least because it’s one thing the SNP hasn’t planned for,” she said. The most recent polls suggest that 80 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds in Scotland are planning to vote SNP in the Holyrood elections, with just five per cent voting Labour. Overall the polls place the SNP on over 60 per cent of the vote with Labour languishing on 20 per cent and the Tories on 12 per cent. “If the Labour party is going to have any chance we need to eat into that,” she said.

But a Corbyn victory could also cause problems for her. She is closely associated with Murphy, an ardent Blairite, whose former Chief of Staff, John McTernan describes Corbyn’s “insane hard-left policies” as the “the antithesis of Kez’s personal politics.” Although she is currently refusing to publicly endorse any of the candidates, it’s not hard to imagine that as someone who is passionate about gender equality, she might think it’s time the UK Labour party had its first female leader. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t secretly fancy another woman leader of the UK party,” said McTernan.

Her frustration with the power of the SNP party machine, at a time when her own appears to have collapsed after decades of complacency, is clear. “What the SNP has done is New Labour squared—the simple message, the discipline. You never see backbenchers speak out against the government line, they’re all bought into a simple message, which is independence, there is no scope for individual thought.”

As someone who has rebelled against the party line over 500 times in his career, Corbyn seems a strong advocate for individual thought. Would she join him in apologising for the Iraq War, as he has pledged to do if elected leader? Surprisingly, she claims not to have heard Corbyn’s pledge, despite it dominating the news headlines that morning. Either she was bluffing or Scottish Labour really do operate in a Scots-centric bubble. After trying to evade the question by saying “arguably by his sheer existence Corbyn lays the Tony Blair ghost to rest," she admitted that; “If there was one single thing which turned a group of people off the Labour Party [the Iraq War] would be it...That said, I wasn’t in the party when we went to war in Iraq... I represent a new generation of Scottish politicians.”

But it’s the divisions created by last September’s independence referendum, rather than the lingering sense of betrayal over the Iraq War, which lie at the root of Labour’s predicament in Scotland. Dugdale described the May wipeout, which saw Labour lose 40 of its 41 Scottish seats—among them Glasgow North East which recorded the country’s biggest swing of 39.3 per cent, as “an inevitability”. The decision by Labour to join forces with the Tories for the Better Together campaign was seen by many as an unforgiveable act—proof that the Labour Party no longer represents the interests of the Scottish people. “There are people who will never vote for us again because of the referendum. They are lost to me. But, there is another group of people who are really angry that they saw Labour and Tory politicians side-by-side. In May they had a democratic mechanism through which to express that anger. They screamed it and we were left with one MP.”

It’s painfully ironic, that after years of baiting the Tories over their single MP, Labour now find themselves in the same position. Dugdale gives a bitter laugh and admits that she’s still not over that defeat, describing it as “incredibly personal, like grief.”

Despite her fresh ideas and her optimism, there is a sense of helplessness bred by the scale of Labour’s collapse. While she accepts that if the May 2016 Holyrood elections were held tomorrow it would be “incredibly difficult” for her party, she as yet has little more than self-help platitudes to offer voters. “You have to lean in to the anger and say ‘yeah I get it, you want to change this country, I want to change this country too, how about walking with me?’”

Dugdale, who studied law at Aberdeen University, never felt the pull to student politics. The calling only came after graduating when she found herself aged 20, unemployed, sitting in her flat, watching daytime TV and looking for jobs online. A friend suggested she think instead about how she might make a difference. “I joined the Labour party during the second term of Blair’s government, because I believed in what they were doing... I don't think that makes me a Blairite. It makes me someone who wants to win elections so we can deliver change. I know that sounds like a really New Labour statement, but it’s just practical politics.”

She claims not to be ashamed of her middle-class upbringing, despite being accused by The Spectator’s Scotland Editor, Alex Massie, in The Times of trying to pass herself off as working class when laying out her stance on education. “I’ve never claimed to be working class, I’m the daughter of two teachers—it doesn't get more middle class than that.” Her father, Jeff Dugdale, is a fully paid-up SNP member who has in the past given her a Twitter telling off over her criticism of Nicola Sturgeon's party.

Unsurprisingly given her background, she believes that “education, education,” is the key to inspiring voters imaginations. That also has echoes of Blair, I point out. “I didn’t say it three times”, she protests. “Today, I was stopped on the streets in Glasgow and in Edinburgh which really surprised me. Six months ago when that happened it was for someone to shout at me about the referendum. Now, people are saying I’m so glad you’re talking about education, I’m so glad you’re talking about something other than the referendum.” And yet, despite her enthusiasm for this subject I can’t extract much actual policy detail from Dugdale—all I know is what she won’t do; which is introduce free schools, academies, the successful Teach First training scheme and university tuition fees. The most radical she gets is hinting at a fresh approach to homework which she calls “an enforcer of inequality,” but stops short of saying she would abolish it.

With her party so deeply divided, Dugdale is probably right to exercise a degree of caution at this early stage. Her primary focus has to be creating a semblance of unity—only then can Labour get on with the job of attacking the SNP’s economic case for independence. If Dugdale can fight and win a second referendum, whenever it comes, the SNP will suffer an existential crisis and a Labour fight back can begin in earnest. Currently though the situation is dire. Not only is the party alienated from voters, but it seems its staff are barely speaking to each other. Dugdale recalls a recent visit to party HQ; “I walked in and the researchers were all sitting at their computers with headphones in watching the same thing on BBC News—a debate between McTernan and Owen Jones, who were at loggerheads over the Labour leadership. There was a TV in the room but they all chose to watch it independently. There are so many sides [in the party] and you have to be on one.”

Dugdale points to the “tremendous” trade union support she received during her campaign as proof she can be a unifying force. She is also committed to continuing the modernisation begun under Murphy—overhauling her shadow cabinet in a bid to reconnect the party with its core values. While, most of the faces are the same (there’s only one new minister), their roles have been rebranded. “I’ve scrapped all the job titles, there is no shadow minister for health, education, transport, or local government—it’s all based around Labour values, such as opportunity, equality, environmental justice and democracy.”

While this could be construed as minor cosmetic surgery which ignores the full-scale transplant the party really needs, her commitment to a more democratic approach was underlined earlier this week when she agreed to debate the party’s stance on Trident renewal at their conference in October. Although she doesn’t think changing their position on this issue will win back voters, and describes herself as a multilateralist who believes the best way to get rid of nuclear weapons is through diplomatic means, she accepts that others in the Labour Party including her more left-wing deputy, Alex Rowley, and her potential new boss, Corbyn, think differently. “I’m committed to democratising the Labour Party in Scotland—I can only impose a line if people feel they have been part of the democratic process to help determine it.”

It’s a bold move, which might help her throw off the Blairite tag. But, it’s possible her hand was forced by Rowley who gave an interview to The Herald newspaper last weekend bemoaning the lack of debate on this issue and calling for a referendum. During our interview, which took place the day before Rowley's Herald interview, Dugdale did make positive noises about debating the issue at conference but there was no sense that this was definite and the referendum that her deputy so publicly called for was never mentioned.

Quelling the in-fighting that is fuelling the party’s self-destruction is no easy task, and the hard-left are clearly not going to make it any easier for her.

But, Kezia Dugdale is tough. A “street fighter”, as John McTernan puts it, who isn’t afraid to go out and face down her critics whether it’s on social media or on the doorstep. Whether she is capable of giving her own mission impossible a happy ending remains to be seen, but what is clear is that even if the May 2016 elections go as badly as the polls suggest, she is planning to stick around for the sequel. I’m serious about changing the party,” she said “because if we don’t it is dead in Scotland.”