Eddie Barnes: Alexander may grate on some in Scottish Labour, but it has to be said

DOUGLAS Alexander, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, is said to have spent much of the summer pondering his words on the future of Scottish politics today. It shows.

The speech he is giving this evening is a frank and unsparing account of the reasons behind his party’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the SNP in May.

From the man behind the party’s “Divorce is an Expensive Business” campaign in 1999, which sought to play on fears about independence, the change of tone is striking. Since then, Labour has allowed itself to wallow in the past, he argues. It had built itself up on the struggles of the 70s, 80s and 90s against the “villain Thatcherism”, in which it played the hero. But then a new country, buoyed on the boom of the noughties and a growing sense of confidence, moved on. Scottish Labour, however, carried on singing its old “hymns” to itself, he says, unaware that it was being watched by “an audience increasingly without personal knowledge of the tunes”. Staying in this comfort zone ensured the party did not feel the need to modernise, as did New Labour. When Alex Salmond came along to shake things up, it was disoriented and vulnerable.

Mr Alexander is by no means dismissive of Mr Salmond’s achievements – he acknowledges people saw the SNP as “broadly aligned with their values” in the election. But, he argues, “gleeful assertions of difference” as coined by the SNP aren’t what people are after either. Therefore, it is up to Scottish Labour to sell the message that chimes with people – to which SNP figures may argue they’re doing that already.

Mr Alexander’s critique of independence remains the same – but what is new about this lecture is his blunt assessment of Labour’s problems and the need for it to put a positive case forward.

The lecture will probably put some noses out of joint within Scottish Labour’s notoriously prickly ranks, but at least Mr Alexander has nailed the nature of their crisis to the door. However, what this lecture doesn’t do is resolve the more pressing question of who is going to answer Mr Alexander’s clarion call (Mr Alexander has ruled himself out for the vacant Scottish leader’s job). Today’s lecture provides a template for the beleaguered Scottish party. Who will be its face?