Breaking: Kezia Dugdale steps down as Scottish Labour leader

[Denzil_DC]

23. Another backgrounder from the Herald, this time from Paul Hutcheon

And the leadership election's off to a swimming start:

Kezia Dugdale: the wasted talent who left her party in the lurch

SCOTTISH Labour’s away day in an Edinburgh hotel on Friday was supposed to be a relaxing affair, but the MSPs, MPs and councillors who bothered attending must have wished they'd stayed at home.

With Kezia Dugdale quitting two days earlier, supporters of the two candidates tipped to replace her – left-winger Richard Leonard and New Labourite Anas Sarwar – had their minds on securing endorsements and printing materials.

But instead they had to listen to party number two Alex Rowley drone on about the “right-wing press” and praise Dugdale in a way he rarely did when she was leader. Others called for “unity” and appealed for colleagues across all sections of the party to come together.

However, a figure in the upper echelons of the party offered a more sceptical assessment of his organisation to this newspaper: “There are more snakes in Scottish Labour than in an Indiana Jones film.”

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15511514.Kezia_Dugdale__the_wasted_talent_who_left_her_party_in_the_lurch/

And here's a piece from our Canadian friend's heroine (though apparently not to the extent that he'll pay her the respect of actually digesting her arguments, preferring to see her as a young firebrand somehow "stolen" by the SNP from Labour) Mhairi Black:

Mhairi Black: Changing the branch manager won’t improve Labour’s fortunes

IT was great to see the opening of the new Queensferry Crossing this week, or the Saltire Bridge as many people have started to call it after the wonderful lighting display which highlighted the structure. It is remarkable when you realise that this bridge was built without any funding from the UK Government and was completed with around £245 million to spare – enough to supply around 30 years of baby boxes. There were lots of compliments for the new bridge even from Labour politicians who until very recently had objected to it and described it as a vanity project.

However, Labour’s attention was soon drawn to yet another leadership contest with Kezia Dudgale’s surprise resignation from the branch office in Scotland. Not counting the temporary, stand-in leaders this will now put Labour on to their ninth leader in Scotland since the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999.

The decision to stand down as leader seems to have come as a surprise to many within Scottish politics and has already resulted in many commentators assessing the success – or otherwise – of Dugdale’s tenure in the post. She certainly inherited a disjointed and downbeat party which had suffered the massive shock of losing all but one of their MPs. However, her role as leader was hampered by many poor interviews where it seemed she was badly briefed and was making up policy as she went. The main driver of Labour policy seemed to be an instinctive hatred of all things SNP; if the SNP proposed a policy then Labour would oppose – without any thought given to the benefit of said policy. Her antipathy to the SNP came to the forefront in the recent snap UK General Election where she seemed very relaxed at the prospect of voters in some constituencies voting Conservative instead of Labour in order to defeat the SNP – a move which certainly helped Theresa May remain as Prime Minister.

...

Labour’s attitude to Scotland has always been one of relying on a steady supply of MPs to warm the green benches in the House of Commons. There is no interest in Scotland unless it is something that can benefit the UK. Jeremy Corbyn’s recent fleeting visit to Scotland highlighted this attitude where he even mentioned Scotland as part of the “regions and nations of England”. If this lack of knowledge wasn’t bad enough his comment about it the problems of establishing a separate legal system in Scotland simply underlined his complete lack of knowledge of this country.

http://thenational.scot/politics/15510549.Mhairi_Black__Changing_the_branch_manager_won___t_improve_Labour___s_fortunes

If you see any resemblance between her take on things and my earlier posts, it's not because I'm psychic or a frikkin political genius, she's just telling it like it is.

For good measure, here's her take in 2015 on Corbyn's election:

Mhairi Black: The election of Corbyn changes nothing

THE election of Jeremy Corbyn was one of those occasions which prove you can never truly predict politics, especially when watching events unfold from within the cynical walls of Westminster.

When he announced his candidacy for the leadership I had multiple conversations with Labour MPs, old and new, who spoke of their frustration and anger that he had put himself forward.

He was, they said, “bringing the party into disrepute” and causing them to have “an old 1980s debate” that they didn’t need to have. The fear that they would be forever unelectable was palpable. If the SNP landslide was considered cataclysmic by many Labour MPs, then the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader was to be considered apocalyptic.

I, like so many others in Scotland, know that this is not an attitude shared widely among a substantial number of the people in the UK, especially in Scotland. The election of a socialist leader is to be viewed by many as a sign of hope. A sign that Labour in England and Wales may actually begin to work with the SNP and take the hand of friendship that has been outstretched. What has been questionable is the insinuation that this is evidence that Labour is returning to its roots as the party my grandpa and father used to vote for. I have received many (often taunting) emails and tweets asking me when I will be “coming home” to join Labour under Corbyn’s leadership. The answer is that I won’t be, and I hope to use this article to articulate exactly why.

http://www.thenational.scot/comment/14855745.Mhairi_Black__The_election__of_Corbyn_changes_nothing/