Freeing up Scottish Labour

When Tony Blair’s Labour government created the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, it reconstructed the UK’s territorial constitution. But legislating for the formal elements of a constitution does not create a new polity. Many other things are needed, which governments cannot simply wish into being—a functioning media, policy-making capacity, and of course functioning political parties. It’s perhaps one of the ironies that Labour’s reforms decentralised one of the world’s most unitary states: but little or nothing changed in the organisation of the Labour Party. So in that sense, Kezia Dugdale’s success in securing formal autonomy for Scottish Labour inside the UK party is simply unfinished business, and arguably overdue.

The internal organisation of any political party—perhaps Labour most of all—is a mystery to most voters, and to many politicians and party members as well. Arcane arguments about a party’s rules become relevant only when they are signs of other, more politically salient, issues. So we all know that disputes about who can stand for the Labour leadership, or how the shadow cabinet is formed, are largely about something else.

So it is with Scottish Labour’s changes. Of themselves they are commonsensical: Scotland is a separate polity, and Labour in the Scottish Parliament needs the freedom to articulate the policies for Scotland and importantly choose the candidates that will get Labour elected there. But of course the underlying issue is really how Scottish Labour is perceived: its nationalist opponents try to characterise it as “London” dominated, and so not unequivocally devoted to the interests of Scottish voters. An easy jibe, but quite effective. Over the years, Scottish Labour politicians haven’t helped: from First Minister Henry Mcleish’s muttered asides about his colleague John Reid (“arrogant bastard”), to Johann Lamont’s petulant parting shot that Scottish Labour was a “branch office,” they have added plausibility to the charge. But in truth, that was always less about the formal allocation of power in the party, and more about their personal authority and ability to persuade colleagues. The authority which Donald Dewar and others exercised to bring the Labour Party and government to the radical change of devolution did not depend on the technicalities of party rules.

Nevertheless something did need to change. Dugdale has done well to take an opportunity in the changing Labour environment to stake her claim to the same self-rule for her party as she favours for Scotland. The spectre of being controlled from outside Scotland is one Labour needed to exorcise, though it can never get away from the fact that it is a British party, not just a Scottish one. Nor should it try, even though many Labour voters defected to nationalism during the referendum. There is no point in Labour becoming a nationalist party. Scotland’s already got one of those, and in any event a majority of Scots still want to be part of a British state. The challenge for Labour is not merely to present policies which the majority of Scots support—Labour’s policy proposals tend to be popular with voters, and get pinched as a result. Nor is it only to field good candidates and a strong leadership team. It is to present both of them in the context of Scotland’s relationship with the UK.

In the last Scottish election, voters polarised on pro- and anti-independence lines. Naturally enough, the SNP harvests the 45 per cent who voted “Yes” in the independence referendum. The Scottish Tories skillfully captured enough pro-UK voters to become Holyrood’s second party and deny the SNP a majority. Labour was left in the middle, talking about something else. It now needs to tell a constitutional story which is more nuanced than shrill opposites: it is after all a pro-UK party, but can rightly claim the credit for devolution in the first place. That balanced place is where the median Scottish voter is, and looks like staying. Labour needs to set all its policies in that context.

Sorting out internal party issues is a necessary piece of housekeeping, and a step on that journey. But in a Scottish politics still trapped in a constitutional groundhog day, more will be needed.