Analysis: Johann Lamont faced with ‘Kinnock-like task’
ONE insightful Labour insider has compared Johann Lamont’s task to that of Neil Kinnock’s when he headed the UK party in the 80s and early 90s.
In other words, the job is to take over an out of touch party facing near extinction to a position where it looks like it can win again. Certainly, as Lamont begins work today, the first section of that analysis looks accurate. But, she faces a massive challenge if she is going to take the party anywhere near where Kinnock did.
At least the scale of May’s defeat has destroyed any complacency from the party. As Lamont said yesterday, it looked to voters in this year’s Holyrood elections like “a tired old political machine which was more about itself than it was about [people]”.
The trouble is, it still remains true now. It was shown up in a disappointing leadership election campaign which has barely registered in the public’s consciousness. It was further illustrated yesterday in the archaic voting system that elected Lamont, which gives just a third of the vote to the party’s actual members. The members wanted Ken Macintosh over Lamont. But the party’s elected representatives and union “affiliates” dictated otherwise.
Many who have paid their subs over recent years would be forgiven this morning for wondering why they bothered.
That may be one of the reforms that she takes on now; yesterday she insisted that “nothing will be off limits” in the way the party approaches reform. So having accepted the defunct state of the party, and the need to examine everything in order to survive, where does she go from here?
The starting point is a country which, as Lamont acknowledged, is no longer a “Labour country”. If ever it were true, she said, that is now “a delusion”. The SNP’s massive victory in May was built on the votes of tens of thousands of people who had always voted Labour in the past but then switched to the SNP in the final few days. The truth facing Labour is that, having made that psychological switch, many people may be inclined now to stay put.
Lamont’s task is first to work out why that happened. Yesterday, she said she wanted first of all to focus on union members who, she acknowledged, had also drifted away from Scottish Labour this year. Given that Lamont’s victory yesterday was achieved with a big hand from the union barons, this focus has already been interpreted as a clear sign that Lamont would be shifting the party leftwards, ready to position herself at the front of every strike march.
This is also the new leader’s background in the bearpit of Glasgow Labour politics. Plenty of Labour people, including beaten leadership candidate Tom Harris, believe this is an electoral cul-de-sac. But her supporters were insistent this analysis of a leftie socialista taking the party back to the good old days was the wrong one. Lamont yesterday wavered in response to questions over whether she wanted to be more left-wing than the SNP. But she added: “I’m not the same person as I was when I was 19, 29, 39.” She says she wants to “listen to people’s experience on the ground”, rather than imposing her own ideology.
Importantly, she also gave a nod to the time we live in, acknowledging that Labour will need to “challenge ourselves to find new ways of delivering social justice in an age when resources are scarce.”
That suggests Labour may consider more than simply screaming “cuts!” at the SNP (although don’t hold your breath). In a sign of further fresh thinking, she is also keen to bring in people from outside the party into her inner circle.
Some may make it into her shadow cabinet. People from outside the party may also be candidates for Holyrood 2016 by this time next year. In another sign of things to come, Lamont and her new deputy Anas Sarwar, a young moderniser, are said to be close to one another.
Labour’s internal reform process goes on. But Lamont’s more immediate task is to lead the campaign against the SNP’s independence bandwagon. It would be her, not anyone else, she reiterated yesterday who would be fronting that campaign. She also equivocated on whether she would allow David Cameron on to the same stage as her in defence of the UK. Instead, her focus was to fight the issue on Labour’s ground. To that end, she sought to draw a thick black line between independence and devolution. Yes, Scottish Labour will examine the devolution settlement to see what other powers might best come north.
But, she insisted, that process would not be “a stop on the way to” independence. It looks like the approach on reform of devolution, in response to independence, will be done cautiously.
Labour can be expected to develop ideas on reforming the current settlement. However, it appears that anyone waiting for Scottish Labour to leap immediately to adopt “devo-max” will be disappointed. The question now is whether Lamont has what it takes personally to withstand the heat of battle, and achieve the kind of credibility that makes a first minister-in-waiting. She is something of an accidental candidate for the job – some friends suggest she never wanted to be leader.
She alluded self-deprecatingly yesterday to some of the barbed comments that have come her way in the campaign, with George Galloway’s recent cruel jibes foremost among them.
As a graduate of Glasgow Labour’s hard school who – in the words of one former colleague – “sometimes looks like someone’s spilt her pint”, she will have to work on her image. The upside is that is that she is undoubtedly tough and smart.
But she starts a long way back – further than ever before, according to a gleeful SNP press release this weekend. She starts as an unknowner against the dominant Alex Salmond. She begins with few resources and little cash, up against an opponent who has lottery millions to play with. She starts with a demoralised party which now knows its heartlands are no more.
Kinnock, of course, never quite made it into power, despite the reforms he made to his ragged party.
Given the landscape she faces, few would bet at present that Lamont will achieve a different fate.
n ebarnes@scotlandonsunday.com
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Comments
There are 16 comments to this article
Page 1 of 2
Canton-eze
Monday, January 9, 2012 at 02:13 AM#7 & #9 - I thought she was Klebb not Krebs. Here to help.
Canton-eze
Monday, January 9, 2012 at 02:09 AM'Johann Lamont faced with ‘Kinnock-like task’ - Don't think so. She is faced with different task than that which faced Kinnock. He has ultimately done immensely well for himself and his extended family in the Euro arena of big bucks for doing bog-all other than turning up. Kinnock had, for example, Michael Foot, Derek Hatton, Tony Benn, and all the extreme union nutjobs to yelp at. Lamont in Scotland (an unquestioning lackey) has the legacy of that utter embarrassment Gray and the "leaders" and followers that immediately preceded him. And let's not forget the Gang of Negativity who daily shot off their nasty individual and collective gobs on these forums over the past year and more. One of them now a Labour MSP whose credibility (if any) was certainly shot to pieces by her persistent sarcastic diatribes on these forums. She's strangely silent now though, with handsome salary and perks safely assured at least for the current term. Labour is deader than dead in the water in Scotland. It's a party of Blair-legacy phoney socialists based in west-central Scotland which is commanded and controlled from you-know-where. Desperate stuff.
Kennedy Clan
Sunday, January 8, 2012 at 07:20 PM#13 You are not correct; the first major test for Johann Lamont has already started - it is to make an impact as leader of Scottish Labour, not just the MSPs. With Maggie Curran muscling in on the devolved issue of childcare, it looks like she isn't even going to manage that and it is still dog eat dog at the top of Scottish Labour. With its reliance on the Councillor cadre for its activist base, this May could prove to be the tipping point for the Scottish branch of the UK Labour Party. And, by the way, if you are fighting to win an outright majority you have to put up candidates - it will be interesting to see how many fewer candidates Labour puts up in May.
Martin H
Sunday, January 8, 2012 at 09:32 AMClearly the first major test of Johann Lamont's leadership will be the performance of Labour at the forthcoming local elections. In 2007 the SNP emerged as the largest party in terms of councillors elected under the new STV system. It is not at all clear that despite the scale of the SNP victory last May under the (partly) proportional voting system that the scale of their victory will be repeated for council elections, where people vote as much on local issues as much as National ones.............. The sNP have set their sites firmly on winning Glasgow from Labour, and given the recent disarray by Labour there on candidate selection, it is probably their best ever chance. But STV can be difficult to work in your favour. In Glasgow the SNP will have to risk putting up more than one candidate in many areas, and risk splitting the vote or vote distribution......... For those who are now writing Labour off in May, then the little commented upon statistic that showed that in those council by elections fought by Labour and the SNP with a direct comparison with 2007 showed an 8% increase in SNP support (mostly at the expense of the Lib Dems) BUT a 4% rise in Labour's support too. I make no predictions other than I think on these results that Labour will (just) retain overall control in Glasgow, but in Edinburgh, even if the SNP increase their number of councillors, the Labour group will emerge as the largest Party, and the Lib Dem vote will collapse. A significant rise is Green councillors is also very likely. personally I would like to see a LabourGreenSNP coalition in Edinburgh, and that is quite possible, because 'Independence' is not a local issue.
avsecbostjan3@yahoo.com.ar
Saturday, December 31, 2011 at 06:58 AMComment removed by moderator
B K
Sunday, December 25, 2011 at 04:53 PM#7 "Rosa Krebs from the Bond movies?" I thought she was Jim Devine in drag!
Arthur G
Sunday, December 25, 2011 at 11:16 AM#9 Heinz Totaldoofer Thanks for your forensic insight. I now see the error of my ways in following Salmond, the false prophet....ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha,ha, ha...
Heinz Doofensmirtz
Monday, December 19, 2011 at 09:11 AMFate has been kind to us Nationalists -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Really...you consider being led by someone capable of selling real independence out for a half way house that keeps him in power a benevolent fate?
Heinz Doofensmirtz
Monday, December 19, 2011 at 09:09 AMA Kinnock like task eh...so she's going to fall into the sea, lose and election and then get her and her family jobs in Brussels. Nice result for an unconvincing transsexual simpleton who did not have the popular vote.
Kennij
Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 07:18 PMFate has been kind to us Nationalists when we got the likes of Wee Wendy, the wonderkind Ian Gray, and now Ms Lamont as opposition . Or as George Galloway said, Rosa Krebs from the Bond movies. Has anyone watched her on telly. She is incapable of actually answering a question. Alex will be waiting to take her apart at question time. Oh, I can't wait.
brianwci
Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 04:08 PMI think Ms Lamont and her team should acquaint themselves with the terms Attitudes and Belief Systems. Once formed they govern our thinking and actions. Ms Lamont cannot have it both ways, one minute nothing is being excluded from her thinking, the next, Independence is a no no and further devolution will be approached cautiously. This is not the mood of the nation which is increasingly more open to Independence and already wants far more powers than envisaged by Calman or currently appear in the impoverished Scotland Bill. It looks like Ms Lamont is squeezing herself into a new straight jacket which will doom her cause from day 1. Meanwhile Salmond and his SNP juggernaut not only know their road, they are already a good distance down it and what's more, they have alternative routes should problems arise.
New Unionism
Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 12:23 PMShe believed in taxing the poor to allow the rich more, reduced social mobility, believes hiding the McCrone report was right whilst telling people she is standing up for the interests of Scotland, particularly the workers. What a joke. they are unelectable end of
gus1940
Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 06:29 AMCan anybody in their right mind imagine her as First Minister?
McNasty
Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 05:42 AMWho will give Johann Lamont odds on lasting two years?
The Harder They Come
Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 03:44 AM"unknowner " - oh dear
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