Leader: New leader Johann Lamont should learn fromthe voice of experience

ONCE maligned and sometimes ridiculed figure in Scottish politics, former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish has, since his resignation over the “muddle not a fiddle” of his constituency office affairs, nevertheless continued to play a part in public life in Scotland, advising the SNP administration, conducting a well-received inquiry into Scottish football and contributing from time to time to the debate within the party he once led at Holyrood.

While there may be some inside Labour who will still disparage Mr McLeish, they would be unwise to do so, for if they look at the direction he chose for what was then the Scottish executive in his brief year as First Minister, they will find a great deal to inform the approach that the party’s new Scottish leader, elected today, must take.

Mr McLeish it was who tried to pull the parliament away from the clunking fist of the UK Labour government in Whitehall, which did everything in its power to thwart his ambitions to use the powers that the same government had bestowed on Holyrood through devolution to introduce policies which differed from Westminster, free personal care being the most controversial example.

Now whether or not one agreed with this and other policies – and this newspaper had serious reservations over free care – in going into battle with his party in London, Mr McLeish was undoubtedly responding to the mood in Scotland, which had become more small “n” nationalistic since 1999 and which, in time, led to the rise of the SNP.

It is interesting to speculate what might have happened in Scotland had Mr McLeish remained in power and not been replaced by Jack McConnell, who appeared to have less stomach for the fight with Labour in London. In terms of his populist policies, Mr McLeish had a lot in common with the SNP. Had he remained First Minister and continued to push for greater autonomy, might he have outflanked the SNP? We will never know.

What we do know is that, in warning that his party has “no vision” for Scotland and without that the nation will drift further towards independence, Mr McLeish now speaks with some authority. It is obvious, as Mr McLeish tells this newspaper, very few Scots “know what the party stands for” and it is “too heavily bound by Westminster” in its policies, identity and outlook. How else to explain the Labour’s humiliating defeat in May’s Holyrood election which allowed the SNP to form an unprecedented majority government?

The challenge for Johann Lamont or Ken Macintosh, whoever is elected today, is to address these issues and begin the slow and painful process of reconnecting Labour with the Scottish people. The new leader should recognise the prescience of Mr McLeish’s analysis. Admitting there is a problem is the first step on the road to recovery.