AS SCOTTISH Labour gathers for its spring conference ahead of May’s crucial election, many of the delegates squeezed into Glasgow Science Centre’s function suite are asking “Where’s Jeremy?”
The Labour leader is taking the highly unusual step of not attending today’s conference, choosing to be “out on the doorstep” campaigning on the European referendum instead.
Kezia Dugdale, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, insists Corbyn’s non appearance is not an issue. Oddly, Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell is also not attending conference, despite being in Glasgow with no official commitments. He was addressing the FSB conference yesterday and is attending the campaign launch of Coatbridge MSP Elaine Smith tomorrow.
In the wake of their election to the party’s two top jobs back in September, Corbyn and his deputy Tom Watson promised they would come up to Scotland to campaign once a month.
Since then Corbyn has visited Scotland three times and Watson once.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland yesterday, Dugdale insisted that it did not matter as she and not Corbyn was in charge of the Scottish party.
She said: “I lead an autonomous Scottish Labour party – I am in charge. I work very closely with Jeremy Corbyn, we are good friends, but he doesn’t need to be there to offer support to me or indeed to the Scottish Labour campaign.”
She added: “I am incredibly supportive of Jeremy Corbyn, very loyal to him. We are a good team and part of being a good team is knowing when to take your place.
“And this weekend I am going to lead the Scottish Labour Party towards the Scottish Parliament election. It is really that simple.”
Opinion polls suggest Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservatives are fighting for second place in May’s election. A Yougov poll for the Times last week had the two parties tied in the constituency vote and the Tories two points ahead in the regional vote.
Party sources say the Tories leapfrogging Labour would be a disastrous result, though there would be no immediate pressure on Dugdale to stand aside. Rather, she’d be expected to stay until after next year’s council elections.
The party’s left have been buoyed by a recent poll giving Labour a narrow, one-point advantage for the first time since Corbyn’s election, though Ed Miliband had a significantly higher lead at this point in his time as leader.
There are also rumblings that George Osborne may call an early election if he becomes the next leader of the Conservative Party, perhaps as soon as next year.
In her speech to delegates this afternoon, Dugdale will focus on the election immediately in front of her, putting her own political philosophy right at the heart of her speech.
Dugdale is expected to say: “This is who I am. I’m a socialist. My Scotland is one where there are no foregone conclusions. I believe that trend is not destiny. That people aren’t fated to be rich or poor. That we can choose to be better as a society.
“It isn’t a foregone conclusion that children born to poor families are half as likely to get to university as their wealthier classmates. It isn’t inevitable that that same child born poor will die nearly a decade earlier.
“It isn’t their destiny that poor children will be more likely to die in an accident, more likely to go to prison, more likely to take their own life when they are adults. We aren’t fated to live in an unfair country.
“We can choose to be different. In this election, we can use both our votes to do things differently.”
SNP MSP Linda Fabiani was scathing of Corbyn’s non-appearance, saying: “Even with his rock-bottom poll ratings, the fact that Jeremy Corbyn won’t appear at Labour’s own conference is extraordinary – people will no doubt be asking whether he is simply so unpopular that Kezia Dugdale begged him to stay away, or whether Scotland is so far down his list of priorities that he couldn’t be bothered to turn up.
“For John McDonnell to be spending the weekend minutes from the Labour conference but not attending can only be seen as a massive snub – the question is, who’s snubbing who?
“Kezia Dugdale famously said that a Corbyn victory would leave Labour carping on the sidelines – but nobody could have imagined that Corbyn himself would be left carping outside the conference hall.
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