David Maddox: Scottish Labour seems to have given up on the election and started thinking about a new leader

Published on Monday 25 April 2011 21:25

IT SAYS a lot about the state of mind of many in the Labour party and the disastrous Holyrood campaign, that thoughts for some are now turning to who will succeed Iain Gray as leader if, as the polls suggest, the party falls to a calamitous defeat on 5 May.

While this may be seen as disloyal, it is hard to blame people who have watched their party lose a 15-point lead and fall 13 points behind the SNP in less than a month. Already one or two are muttering about the way Ed Miliband has gone from promoting the Holyrood election as the springboard for Labour's recovery to apparently trying to keep his fingerprints off electoral humiliation in Scotland.

But thoughts of the future are not happy ones, not least because there is a dearth of talent to choose from in Holyrood to take on the thankless task of leading the fight against Alex Salmond for five long years.

There are several candidates being discussed, the favourite being finance spokesman Andy Kerr. He is articulate but has plenty of enemies and is described by some in his party as "unreliable".

The candidate most likely to emerge as a rival to Kerr is health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie. Some commentators never forgave her for standing up for her friend Wendy Alexander, but others in the party respected the way she was willing to take the flak day-in, day-out during Alexander's leadership woes. She has also often come off better in her exchanges with the SNP's crown princess Nicola Sturgeon, but while Baillie is likeable and a political bruiser, there will be questions over whether she can lead a sustained assault against an A-lister like Salmond.

The only young gun in the ranks is the justice spokesman Richard Baker. He has won many of his fights with Kenny MacAskill but he sounds and looks like a head boy at a minor public school, which means he will continue to be characterised as a lightweight.

One of the best thinkers is Tom McCabe but for many he lacks charisma.

The wildcard is Hugh Henry, who has designs on the presiding officer's job. He has the calibre to take on Salmond, as he showed as the convener of the public audit committee, but he is a left winger and former militant member with not much of a constituency in the party.

Some have muttered about the chances of bringing in one of the MPs to do the job – but Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander have their sights set on big Westminster roles and there is no interest from John Reid and Des Browne.

Then there is Margaret Curran. She is flourishing as an MP in Westminster. She has become the "go to" person for welfare, proved she can do well on the toughest of stages and is articulate, tough and likeable. The problem is that in 2008 she was asked to risk her career battling for Glasgow East and not pushed to fight the leadership campaign instead. She has just stood down as an MSP.

As one party member ruefully noted last week: "Margaret Curran is the one that got away."