IT is a truth universally acknowledged that a politician in search of a headline has very little shame. All politicians are opportunists to a greater or lesser extent. I will freely admit there are one or two things I have said in an opportunistic way that, on reflection, make me cringe a bit and wish I had kept schtum.
But I’ve never – yet – said or done anything as a politician which made me wish the earth would open up and swallow me whole. Yet that is how I imagine my sensible Scottish Labour colleagues must feel after nearly two weeks of their party being solidly ridiculous.
It started with Glasgow City Council letting people know the Winter Gardens was in need of major renovation and would need to be closed to the public at the end of the year. This created an issue for the adjoining People’s Palace since the fire exit was via the Winter Gardens. However, it was made clear that council officers were working on a solution (creating a new fire exit) which would allow the People’s Palace to remain open.
This didn’t stop Scottish Labour launching a petition to Save the People’s Palace from the terrible SNP who wanted to shut it down. Rarely have I seen a campaign backfire so spectacularly, so quickly.
The people of Glasgow shouldn’t be evicted from their Palace.
— Scottish Labour (@scottishlabour) October 19, 2018
Sign the petition below and tell the SNP not to close these iconic buildings. 👇https://t.co/M4lzcuDfpc pic.twitter.com/egKNgpUxq5
A recurring theme was Twitter users asking Scottish Labour just how stupid they think people are. We were soon to find out, as thousands of women took to the streets of Glasgow to march in support of their equal pay claims. Much has been written about the Equal Pay strike, often focussed on the political shenanigans going on in the background. There have been shenanigans – I will come back to that – but I also want to say that this is not the whole story of the strike.
In my view it was also the outcome of 10 years of pent-up frustration and anger at being ignored and belittled, and sidelined. After a decade of inaction by previous Labour administrations the dam simply burst and the women took the opportunity to seize the initiative while they still could. For them, it was probably a genuinely empowering moment and we shouldn’t dismiss that, though I profoundly hope that we can now put it behind us and get on with the business of agreeing a settlement.
Attempts to point-score after equal pay strikes in Glasgow backfired. Photograph: Kirsty Anderson
But back to the political shenanigans. Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard was quick to tweet his support of the strike, claiming that the women were writing their chapter in the history of the labour movement. There’s only one problem with that. The vast majority of claimants are not represented by their trade unions but by a private lawyer and – if you actually ask the women concerned – they believe that the trade unions let them down over many years.
Many of them believe that trade unions were culpable in helping to draw up a bespoke pay scheme in Glasgow which protected men’s pay at the expense of women’s. It is certainly the case that the WPBR pay scheme adopted in Glasgow – in contrast to the model pay scheme adopted by most local authorities which has never been successfully challenged – was drawn up in co-operation with trade unions and it is this scheme which has been found to be discriminatory.
So Richard Leonard may have been a bit precipitate in claiming their fight was his fight. Particularly when it emerged that he had been working for one of the trade unions at the time the Glasgow pay scheme was drawn up.
Sensible Labour colleagues have kept their heads down during this period instead of trying to co-opt the women’s struggle as their own, aware that the history of the equal pay dispute does not reflect well on their party. I think there is a genuine realisation among many Labour councillors that their party got it badly wrong. But those Labour councillors weren’t out shamelessly waving placards with Susan Aitken’s face on them and attempting to rewrite history as they went along.
What makes politicians behave like this? It is a question I increasingly ask myself watching the antics of Scottish Labour. As I said at the start, all politicians are opportunistic to some extent. We need to be honest about that. The SNP took every opportunity going when we were in opposition but I genuinely don’t believe we were ever this ridiculous.
If you take your opportunism to the lengths that Labour now does you will simply alienate voters. People aren’t stupid. If you don’t respect voters, they won’t respect you. I think the terrible truth is they actually see through all our games and decide who to vote for despite them, not because of them. That’s probably something we all need to remember.
Mhairi Hunter is an SNP councillor in Glasgow and a prolific tweeter.
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