Euan McColm: Johann Lamont must seize the day and push ahead with reshuffle

Who’d have thought it? But it’s true.

The past few weeks have seen First Minister Alex Salmond under sustained pressure like never before since he came to power. The row over an independent Scotland’s membership of the European Union has been a bruising one for the SNP leader. Lamont has enjoyed real parliamentary successes, building attacks on the First Minister’s integrity, then broadening them to include among her targets his deputy Nicola Sturgeon and his finance secretary John Swinney.

But the festive season is no respecter of political momentum and Lamont’s has gone while the Scottish Parliament closes its doors and we proceed with matters of goodwill to all. The Labour leader would be complacent to think that she’ll simply pick up in January where she left off. She would be careless to assume that the First Minister and his team aren’t, even now, preparing a new strategy.

I can tell her they are, with Salmond and Sturgeon scheduling set-piece speeches where they weave the constitutional argument into issues such as welfare and education. The SNP will also try to turn other areas of uncertainty – Nato, Sterling, benefits – into “discussions with the people”. These are matters for the Scottish people to debate and decide, not for us to dictate, they will say. The SNP is learning from the EU row and Salmond’s tone will change accordingly.

Lamont has recently been considering a major reshuffle of her team. She has identified weak links and is keen to promote some of the Labour group’s brightest new members. Plans have reached an advanced stage. An early January announcement has been rehearsed. This weekend, however, she’s hesitating.

Lamont is ready to gamble that the SNP’s recent woes will rekindle as soon as the last Christmas tree is dropped in a lay-by and politicians return to business. Why draw attention away from the government when she doesn’t have to? So, a reshuffle will happen – it’s simply a matter of when.

But surely Lamont should do it now, when it doesn’t look like a defensive measure? If she fails to seize the upper hand the day she returns to the debating chamber in 2013, a team change a month down the line might appear a rather desperate fix.

I can’t remember the last time a Scottish Labour leader had an opportunity to reshuffle from a position of some strength. Lamont can take great credit for making political life difficult for Alex Salmond recently, but her front-bench remains weaker than it might.

And the weakest link is the man she defeated to become her party’s leader, Ken Macintosh. He was handed the finance portfolio by Lamont in a gesture of victorious magnanimity she must surely have come to regret. His debating chamber clashes with Finance Secretary John Swinney are routinely excruciating to watch, displaying as they do the lack of drive and focus that saw him unhindered by promotion during the eight years when Labour led the Scottish Executive.

Even worse, Macintosh’s ineptitude is a favourite topic of conversation in the parliamentary Labour group. He does not at all inspire the confidence of his colleagues. And when your own people don’t have faith in the money man…

Since the economy – and how it might be impacted upon by constitutional change – will be a central plank of the debate to come, Lamont needs a new shadow finance secretary more confident in dealing with both numbers and Swinney. One name in the frame is former leader Iain Gray. Friends say that, though initially wounded by election defeat last year, he’s bored away from the front line. Lamont, meanwhile, is determined to see him on her team “as soon as he is ready”.

While the instinct might be to remember his catastrophic 2011 election campaign and write him off, Gray is a capable front-bench politician who found himself in the wrong job. He has the experience and confidence to take on Swinney. There would be a pleasing echo of the Cabinet secretary’s own political career in this appointment, with a failed leader starting again in the finance brief.

The Labour leader is also keen to promote newer MSPs, Kezia Dugdale, Jenny Marra and James Kelly. Dugdale is liable to be given a health or education brief.

Should Gray end up in finance – though education is also mooted – Marra may find herself working as his deputy, which would be a useful learning experience for someone tipped as a potential future leader. Kelly is also quoted in relation to the finance brief, though his parliamentary performances can be undermined by nervousness. Expect him to have a bigger role somewhere.

Lamont, say friends, wants to build a team that’s ready for the 2016 election. Those who are promoted – Dugdale, Marra, Kelly – are liable to be senior shadow Cabinet secretaries by the time they next face the electorate. They will be part of the alternative government. Lamont has little time to waste in trying to shape them into politicians capable of besting Swinney or Sturgeon in debate. And, more importantly to her, of persuading the electorate to return to Labour.

Johann Lamont’s recent political momentum has lifted the spirits of her parliamentary colleagues. If she’s to regain that momentum, she needs a fresh story for the new year, and a team re-energised. Alex Salmond and his Cabinet are far from down and out after the rough and tumble of weeks past. He – and they – will come back fighting in a fortnight. Lamont had better be fully ready for them. On the basis of the shadow Cabinet she has in place now, she won’t be. I think she’d live to regret postponing her reshuffle. «

Twitter: @euanmccolm