SCOTTISH Labour’s new leader Richard Leonard has given a bizarre, gaffe-strewn speech in Glasgow standing alongside Jeremy Corbyn.
Leonard attacked the SNP for claiming there was full employment in Scotland, but the SNP have never claimed there was full employment.
Leonard also called for Scottish Water to be nationalised, despite the utility company already being 100 per cent owned by the state.
SNP politicians were quick to point out the oddness of the party leader’s claims.
Speaking to activists in Glasgow’s Lighthouse museum yesterday morning, the veteran left-winger who succeeded Kezia Dugdale as Scottish party chief last week said he had been disappointed by how little Holyrood had achieved since devolution.
Leonard said the 20-year-old Parliament had resulted in “too many hopes unrealised and too many aspirations unfulfilled".
He argued that this would change under a Labour government in Edinburgh: “The SNP claim we have full employment.
“But, as a recent Sheffield Hallam University study showed, the real rate of unemployment here in Glasgow is not 3 per cent, it is over 9 per cent.
“The real rate of unemployment in places like North Ayrshire is not 4 per cent, it is over 10 per cent.
“We do not have full employment. Which is why we must make real full employment part of our real change — and a clear and specific goal of government policy again.”
SNP MSP Christina McKelvie was taken aback by the claim. She tweeted: “I have never heard the SNP say that.”
She added: “Better employment rates across all groups in Scotland but still work to do. What’s his point anyway? Labour claimed full employment after the war but it was only for men, women forced to leave work when kids came.”
This month’s unemployment statistics showed a slight rise in the number of people out of work in Scotland, increasing by 0.1 per cent, around 2000 people, to 109,000.
However, the unemployment rate of 4.0 per cent in Scotland remains far lower than a year ago when it was 4.7 per cent.
Leonard then went on to announce twelve policy reviews to “further develop our policies on the vital issues facing the people of Scotland". One of those would look at extending public ownership.
Leonard told delegates: “These reviews will advance our mission to build a new economy, a new society with an expanded public realm.
“That means more ownership and more control for people in our economy.
“The people of Scotland deserve public services which are publicly owned and publicly accountable.
“Our railways, our buses, energy and Scottish Water need to be taken back and remain in public ownership.”
McKelvie sarcastically tweeted: “The sustained pressure from Richard Leonard has returned Scottish water to the public, I’m sure you all are very grateful.
“Next up he will invent the NHS...”
In 2015, the Scottish Government were criticised for awarding a £360 million contract for billing and meter to the private Anglian Water company.
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