Johann Lamont has promised to make Labour “Scotland’s party” after her victory in the leadership election. She takes over from Iain Gray. She needs to rebuild the party, who suffered their second successive Holyrood defeat in May.
She said: “Scotland couldn’t hear us but what the people saw looked to them like a tired old political machine which was more about itself than it was about them. And to be fair, they’d been trying to tell us that for some time. “If any one of us ever deluded ourselves into the thought that Scotland was a Labour country, last May must finally have shaken us out of that delusion.“The task now is to make Labour Scotland’s party again.”
A big ask considering how successful and popular the SNP are and how charismatic Alex Salmond is.
Interestingly she also said that the Labour rule book could be torn up, “While I’m leader, nothing will be off limits – there will not be one policy, one rule, one way of working which cannot be changed.“Our one test will be what is in the interests of the people of Scotland – not what is in the interests of ourselves.”
She is the first Scottish Labour leader to take charge of the whole party not just MSPs, after the role was beefed up in the wake of an internal review earlier this year. But she already faces criticism that her victory was only secured because of backing from the trade unions.
The party leader is elected by a college of MSPs, MPs and MEPs, party members and members of Labour-affiliated trade unions. Each group make up a third of the vote. Lamont won two of these sections but Ken Macintosh got more than half of the votes from individual party members.
Another tactic may be she did her acceptance speech in Gaelic ‘She lived all her life in Glasgow, yet both of her parents are Gaels from the Hebridean island of Tiree.
How much of a threat she will be to the SNP os questionable. How effective she can be we will see rebuilding labour in Scotland is a major ask especially as Labour is seen as ineffective in the wider political sphere. A really good Scottish friend tells me that of the Labour leaders in the UK she has the “most about her”.
It will be also be interesting to see how her and Alex Salmond interact .
4 comments:
she's not the first woman Wendy Alexander was also Labour leader in the Parliament, the question for Johann is does she have the ideas, charisma and political nous to take on Alex Salmond and win at a time when Scotland is writing a new chapter of its history?
Let the Scots have an independent Scotland. Obviously this will mean a lot of jobs heading south. But independence comes at a cost in the short/medium term. cw
She is the first to lead the whole of labour not just the parliament
Lets hope for the best. Some one new and a female at that, bringing fresh blood and new ideas.
The second anonymous answer was interesting and I have often thought that might be for best in the long run.
Maggie X
Nuts in May
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