Labour’s crisis in Scotland could deny it the keys to Downing Street

Labour has put its fingers in its ears in the hope that not hearing the bad news would make it go away.

Labour has put its fingers in its ears in the hope that not hearing the bad news would make it go away

In the end, Johann Lamont’s resignation as leader of the Scottish Labour Party over the weekend was probably inevitable.

Increasingly poor polling results and a party looking divided meant that something had to change. Sadly though, Ms Lamont is being used as a scapegoat for a much bigger problem – namely Ed Miliband’s failure to connect with voters across the country.

Putting aside the deserved sense of grievance that the outgoing leader of the Scottish Labour Party has at the way Labour HQ in London stifled the Scottish party’s ability to do things its own way, the independence referendum highlighted the dire position Miliband personally is in north of the border.

For a leader of the Labour Party to be performing worse in the polls in Scotland than the Conservatives when voters are asked which leader they prefer is bad enough. Add that to the fact that just 1 per cent of Scots trust Ed Miliband most to deliver extra powers for Holyrood – again behind David Cameron – and the picture becomes bleaker still.

Whilst a new leader north of the border might help, Labour’s immediate priority will be the UK General Election, an election in which it will be Miliband, not the Scottish leader, who will be putting himself forward as a prime minister-in-waiting. It is for this reason that Labour officials would be making a catastrophic error in believing that a mere changing of the guard at Holyrood is enough.

So why does all this actually matter?

Because Labour’s crisis in Scotland now looks more likely than ever to deny it the keys to Downing Street, allow David Cameron to continue as prime minister and by default continue the sense of grievances across Scotland that it isn’t getting a government that it votes for.

With some predictions that the SNP could win up to 25 seats from Labour, Miliband would need to pick up an additional seat in the Midlands and the South for each one it loses in Scotland just to keep the number of MPs he has at the moment, let alone to win an outright majority.

One only has to look at the polling ahead of the Rochester and Strood by-election, a seat which Labour held between 1997 and 2010, to see how dire things are for the party in the South.

The reality is that Labour is in a crisis of its own making. Having taken Scotland for granted for far too long it is now being out-flanked by the SNP on the left, whilst in the South the voters have turned to the right and in northern England, UKIP’s appeal to ‘traditional’ working class voters is becoming a severe headache for Labour strategists.

This has been brewing for some time, but Labour has been caught with its fingers in its ears in the hope that not hearing the bad news would make it go away.

Johann Lamont might have resigned in Scotland, but in the long run it is Ed Miliband who is proving to be more of a problem, and with just months to go before the country goes to the polls, the prospects of any dramatic turnaround looks increasingly unlikely.

As the Christmas carol goes, Labour faces a bleak mid-winter.

Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward

19 Responses to “Labour’s crisis in Scotland could deny it the keys to Downing Street”

  1. colin s crouch

    Only realistic chance for Labour to reach Number 10 would be to engage discussions with the SNP. Look at the arithmetic.

  2. Ocromwell

    Labour has a bigger problem in England.The failure to address the concerns of English voters re: devolved and reserved matters will see many Trad., Labour voters deserting.

  3. littleoddsandpieces

    The traditional core voters to Labour are the poor, in or out of work and on low income retirement.

    The SNP in Scotland are not the only problem. The Scottish Greens and Greens in England will also outflank Labour to its core low income voters.

    So a coalition of SNP and Labour for Scotland, and

    The Greens and Labour in England and Wales.

    Giving the SNP in Scotland and The Greens in England and Wales the sole power over welfare and pensions within a coalition agreement.

    The Greens, if talked up by Labour in England Wales, would give a majority coalition government, and end the problem of Balls’ continuing Tory policies and being even harder on welfare reform that even the Tories.

    If Labour’s Mr Balls had no power over pensions and welfare in government, then Labour could win enough to end the 70 per cent rise in starvation since 2010 to the descendants of the people who created Labour after much struggle.

    I voted Labour all my life, as did generations before me. But I have no reason to vote Labour today or any time in the future, as disabled / chronic sick / unemployed,
    no benefits of any kind and denied state pension payout at 60, along with so far
    530,000 women.

    Labour will not repeal the pension bills 2010-2014,
    the last bill inflicting on huge numbers of women and on poorest workers
    NIL STATE PENSION FOR LIFE and for
    the bulk of the rest, a massively reduced state pension,
    which for many is sole income in old age,
    therefore no food money for life.
    See more detail at:
    https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now

  4. uglyfatbloke

    Perhaps the problem is n’t the rise of the other parties so much as the general rise of the ‘old mates and graduates’ class. Did anybody seriously think Johann Lamont was up to the job? If so, she should have had the support of the hierarchy in London rather than being regularly undermined by them. If not, she should not have been manoeuvred into the post in the first place.
    None of this looks very promising for next year. Murphy may not want to go to Holyrood if it looks like Ed will lose the next GE because Murphy will hope to have a senior post under Ed’s successor…or even be Ed’s successor. If, however, he does take the job, he will face several problems, not least that the Holyrood PLP will see their new leader as one of the people who undermined their previous leader – moreover his bully-boy condescension does not play all that well in the party in Scotland and an awful lot of people got pretty fed up of hearing him talking up his near-death experience with an egg.
    If the party is to avoid grave losses to the gnats next year there has to be a better choice of leader than Murphy. he’s all very well declaiming on the telly, but unless he has the support of the moderator (and that may not be so readily forthcoming at the next GE after the BBC’s behaviour during the referendum) in a TV debate he’s unlikely to fare too well and he goes to Holyrood Sturgeon will chop him into bits. Alternatively if he does not go to Holyrood then his deputy will face a barrage of ‘is that what your boss thinks?’ every time (s)he speaks. FMQs could actually become even more embarrassing for the Holyrood group than it is already. With the best will in the world, Murphy’s credentials do rather speak against him in a Scottish context. He’s a Blairite, he favours nuclear weapons, he’s authoritarian, he’s a centraliser and has a rather bad track-record from then he was at defence (much the same level of incompetence and arrogance as Liam Fox) and worst of all, he’s never going to stand up for Scottish interests if they are in conflict – however marginally – with those of Westminster. Can we visualise him calling for the abolition of the Supreme Court or the return of the Blair ‘seabed grab’? Worst of all, the other parties (not just the the gnats) would be able to talk long and loud (even if incorrectly) about Murphy’s expenses record.
    Who else could be persuaded to stand? It’s a pity that Dugdale and Marra have ruled themselves out since they have the passion and energy for a struggle and are also open -minded enough to look to get things done through cooperation when the chance arises since they already ‘get’ the less hostile ethos of Holyrood. Moreover they don’t have any questionable baggage. Failing either of them changing their minds how about Ken MacIntosh? OTH, Ed may not know Ken’s name…he did n’t know it last time round either.

  5. Alan Ji

    Why would you want to call “for the abolition of the Supreme Court “?

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