SCOTTISH Labour will be doing well even if it is only “applauded off the park” at next year’s Scottish Parliament elections, according to the party’s sole Scottish MP, Ian Murray.
Murray’s admission came during his first major speech since the General Election, during which he gave his backing to Yvette Cooper in the party’s UK leadership contest. Murray said it was time Labour had its first female prime minister.
The Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland has already said he’ll be backing Kezia Dugdale in the Scottish leadership race.
“At UK level I have been quite keen to ensure the debate carries on without me backing anyone, but I am backing Yvette Cooper for the next leader of the Labour Party,” he said. “The reason I am doing that is purely because I think Labour needs its first female prime minister.
“But I also think Yvette has a lot of understanding of the situation in Scotland, I think that she has the determination, she has the confidence.”
The Edinburgh South MP said Ms Cooper’s policy platform was that of someone who would make a “strong leader” going forward.
“We have got four great candidates who are all having a really good debate about the future of the party and we should welcome that and embrace that,” he said.
Although many shadow cabinet members might be unwilling to express a preference in case they pick the wrong horse and end up out of a job. Murray is, as the party’s only Scottish MP, safe in his position as Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland.
For Labour to pass that job on to a non-Scottish MP would likely damage the party’s prospects at the Scottish Parliamentary elections in 2016.
Murray’s decision to back Cooper puts him at odds with one of the two Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) for whom he is the MP.
46 of Scotland’s 60 CLPs have declared in the Labour leadership contest. Edinburgh Pentlands have declared for Corbyn.
Andy Burnham is the favourite among Scottish CLPs, with 17 backing him. 15 have declared for Corbyn, 13 for Cooper and just one for Liz Kendall.
After his speech, when asked how well Labour would do in next year’s Holyrood elections Murray said: “We should always have the aspiration of being in government ... but I think it would be a significant achievement if we were applauded off the park, and I think that’s something we should aspire to.
“We will all go into the election with individual fights in individual constituencies to make sure that we can take that positive policy platform for the future to the Scottish people, to highlight the fact that we we have a government in Scotland that will have been in power for nine years, and has really taken Scotland backwards in those nine years in terms of public services and things that they are responsible for.”
Vince Mills, from the Campaign for Socialism, a left-wing grouping of Labour Party members, says a Corbyn win would be a “game changer” but that an SNP victory next year is still likely.
Mills told The National a Corbyn victory would change “the profile of the Scottish Labour party”.
“What Corbyn would do is reinvigorate those members on the left and encourage a number of people who have left the party to come back” he said.
He continued: “The people who are attracted to the SNP because they have radical politics might well begin to look again at Labour as a more effective way of expressing dissent, and campaigning against things like austerity.”
Mills was also critical of former Scottish Labour Chief of Staff John McTernan, who said the grassroots were wrong to support Corbyn.
“If John’s speaking on behalf of the Liz Kendall faction, the uber-Blairites, they’re now very clearly in the minority” he said. “I think McTernan and crew are struck in the 90s and in particular 1997. I don’t think they represent a significant section of the party any longer.
“Probably people are seeing him as a bit of a buffoon. He’s wheeled on to say outrageous things and duly obliges. His credibility is zero. he managed to lead one candidate to defeat in Australia and then came over to Scotland and repeated the performance. I don’t think people are treating him seriously”.
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