Titanic Task: What New Scottish Labour Leader Johann Lamont Must Do, If She Wants To Rebuild Her Party’s Relationship With The Scottish People – Column 20.1.12 « Joyce McMillan

Titanic Task: What New Scottish Labour Leader Johann Lamont Must Do, If She Wants To Rebuild Her Party’s Relationship With The Scottish People – Column 20.1.12

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JOYCE MCMILLAN for The Scotsman, 20.1.12
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IT’S BEEN A fierce couple of weeks in Scottish politics. Yet behind all the sound and fury of the referendum debate – the grandstanding at Holyrood, the ill-informed bombast at Westminster – there has been another quiet drama unfolding in English politics; and it involves a sudden snapping of patience with Ed Miliband, and his leadership of the Labour Party, among some key groups on the English left. On Tuesday, Westminster’s only Green MP, Caroline Lucas, was even moved to issue a statement inviting the unions to break with Labour at last, and to switch their support to the Greens, who clearly share more of their priorities.

And while relations between Labour and the unions have not yet deteriorated quite that far, there was genuine fury among union leaders this week, particularly over Ed Miliband’s unilateral decision to announce that a future Labour government would not reverse Tory cuts in public-sector pay and pensions, and over some spectacularly right-wing ideas on benefits “reform”, floated last week. The coverage of these initiatives in the London media has, perhaps unsurprisingly, involved a near-universal chorus of establishment approval for Ed Miliband’s wisdom in “standing up” to the unions, and beginning to restore his party’s economic “credibility”.

What is not yet apparently understood inside the Westminster bubble, though, is the extent to which this kind of elite consensus – on the need to keep driving down the pay of ordinary workers, slashing their pensions and benefits, and cutting the services on which they depend – is itself becoming politically toxic across large parts of Britain; and driving millions, including the growing army of young unemployed, into a profound disillusion with, and detachment from, the whole political process.

And if Ed Miliband’s decision to make these gestures to the right raises serious problems for the centre-left across the UK, then they place Scottish Labour’s new leader, Johann Lamont, in an almost impossible position. Already facing a collapse in Labour votes and membership caused by the party’s movement to the Blairite right since the 1990’s, and facing a triumphant Scottish National Party which has – for better or worse – now become the focus of all hope for many centre-left Scottish voters, the new Labour leader now has to deal, in addition, with her party leader’s decision to join the Prime Minister’s gang on the constitutional issue, agreeing that Scotland should be made to hold a “binding” yes-no referendum on independence, and rolling out Westminster Labour “big guns” to lead a government-inspired campaign designed to frighten the Scots into voting “no”.

Now tactically, of course, it is tempting for Labour to join the Tories in wrong-footing Alex Salmond, by demanding the straight yes-no referendum which he fears he cannot win. The First Minister has clearly been taken aback by the extent of his own success in demoralising the opposition parties in Scotland, which has left him without significant support in promoting the “devolution max” option which he also wants to see on the ballot paper; and Labour is doing all it can to prolong his pain.

This is the kind of moment, though, when serious political leaders have to take a step backward from the fray, and the consider the long-term future of the movement which they seek to represent; and it’s this kind of courage and statesmanship that is now required of Johann Lamont. The party she leads was founded on trade union representation, on the co-operative consumer movement, and on a passionate belief in Scottish home rule, as part of what we would now call a federal UK; and although times have changed, the Labour Party has little reason to exist unless it can continue, under 21st century conditions, to speak up for those values.

And this means that Johann Lamont – a strong, thoughtful and well-grounded politician, consistently underrated by many commentators – now has to undertake two formidable political tasks, if she wants to rebuild her party’s relationship with the Scottish people. In the first place, she must become – and persuade Ed Miliband to let her become – the leading advocate for the kind of devolution-plus policy that her party officially supports, and for its proper inclusion on the ballot paper in any forthcoming referendum. In doing this, she will certainly be giving short-term succour to Alex Salmond. She will also, though, be working to give the Scottish people what they actually want and need, which is a chance to win ever-greater control over their own affairs through a gradual, dynamic process which enjoys a high level of general consent; rather than through a divisive and damaging yes-or-no battle over independence which will in fact settle nothing, beyond the shortest of short terms.

Then secondly, having won the trust of voters on this issue, she must begin to reconstruct a real politics of popular representation in Scotland, taking advantage of the rich links of solidarity – and the strong flow of information and ideas – that still bind many people in the Labour and co-operative movement to their colleagues across the UK. To be credible in doing this, Ms Lamont will have to distance herself decisively from her London leadership’s compulsive and increasingly outdated kow-towing to the attitudes and policies of London’s right-wing economic elites; if she succeeds in beginning to develop a viable new social-democratic movement for the 21st century, she may even find that the party’s hapless UK leadership begins to follow her lead, since they seem to have few better ideas themselves.

Even if they do not, though, she will still do better to start rebuilding a distinctive future for the Labour movement in Scotland, than to compromise much further with the kind of policies that have already destroyed the party’s dominant position here. For if it is not decisively challenged now, that tired old rhetoric of Labour right-wingery into which Ed Miliband seemed to be sliding this week could rapidly consign the Labour Party in Scotland to oblivion; leaving us without a vital voice of opposition to an increasingly dominant SNP, without a steady reminder that in the great scheme of things, social justice and decency finally matter more than national identity, and without the kind of serious choice, come election day, that is the stuff of democracy, and the best guarantee of our freedom.