Scottish Labour leader rejects calls for his resignation

Labour’s embattled Scottish leader has dismissed calls for his resignation, warning critics in his increasingly rebellious party that he instead wants “new blood” among candidates for crucial elections to the parliament at Holyrood in Edinburgh next year.

Richard Leonard insisted Scottish Labour would benefit in May from a shift in focus among voters toward economic issues and away from the independence question that has dominated politics in Scotland in recent years.

The unfolding civil war in the Scottish Labour party has potentially far reaching implications for the shape of the UK.

Opinion polls suggest Labour is heading for a rout in the Holyrood elections next May, putting in doubt the future of a party that analysts said had previously been a vital bulwark of opposition to the governing Scottish National party.

Four of Mr Leonard’s fellow Labour members of the Scottish parliament have called for his resignation this week, some condemning in harsh terms the leftwing former trade union organiser’s record in nearly three years as party leader in Scotland.

But Mr Leonard insisted there was no question of him quitting, saying Scottish Labour could not afford the “luxury” of a leadership battle eight months from an election and that it was those calling for his resignation who should consider their positions.

“My critics need to ask themselves whether, if they’ve got such a low opinion of me and a low assessment of Labour’s chances, whether they are the best people to be candidates in next year’s election,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times.

It’s important that we get some new blood, we get some diversity, we get some energy,

Scottish Labour’s executive committee will this month decide rules for selecting candidates standing for election through Holyrood’s proportional representation voting system based on regional lists — under which the vast majority of the party’s 23 Scottish parliament members won seats in 2016. Other members are elected using the first past the post voting system and represent constituencies.

Mr Leonard made clear he hoped that the process of selecting Labour candidates for the regional lists would change the composition of the parliamentary party.

“I think it’s important that we get some new blood, we get some diversity, we get some energy,” he said.

A YouGov poll last month put Labour on 14 per cent for both constituency and regional list voting, trailing far behind the SNP, and also the Scottish Conservatives.

But Mr Leonard said worries about the economy and unemployment fuelled by the coronavirus crisis were making voters more receptive to his longstanding calls for greater government intervention.

The pro-independence, anti-Brexit SNP and the pro-union, pro-Brexit Conservatives had benefited from the focus on constitutional issues since Scotland’s 2014 referendum on leaving the UK, but this was changing, added Mr Leonard.

“We’ve been struggling to try to get a message out above the din of independence, above the din of Brexit,” he said. “I think the real economic crisis that we face as a result of the public health crisis . . . will dominate much more how they cast their vote.”

Labour was the most powerful force in Scottish politics until the SNP won power at Holyrood in 2007, and analysts said its status as the only major leftwing political party that opposes independence means its fortunes remain crucial to UK unity.

“The difficulty of the Labour party is a fundamental weakness for unionism,” said John Curtice, politics professor at Strathclyde university.

Labour could compete with the SNP for voters who would never back the Conservative party of Boris Johnson, UK prime minister, he added.

Scotland’s seats in the UK parliament could also be critical to any return to power at Westminster for Labour, but some members of the British party’s shadow cabinet consider Mr Leonard a weak and uninspiring leader.

Rachel Reeves, shadow Cabinet Office minister, said on Thursday Mr Leonard should consider his position — although she later clarified on Twitter that “matters about Scottish Labour are for Scottish Labour”.

Despite the increasingly open rebellion in Scotland, people close to UK Labour leader Keir Starmer said he did not want to move against Mr Leonard, in part because trying to direct the Scottish party from London would risk alienating voters north of the border.

Mr Starmer’s inner circle is also aware that ousting Mr Leonard would be unpopular among activists sympathetic to the UK Labour leader’s leftwing predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, who still make up a large proportion of the party’s membership. Mr Starmer’s supporters also believe — as does Mr Leonard himself — that the Scottish party’s problems run far deeper than one individual.

Mr Leonard said Scottish Labour’s decline began long before he took charge, adding that the acrimonious resignation in 2014 of the then leader Johann Lamont had led only to the “calamity” of a near wipeout for the party in Scotland at the UK general election the following year.

“[We] know that divided parties do not get support,” added Mr Leonard.