Leonard resignation: a chance for Unionists desperate for a Scottish Labour revival

“Nothing in his leadership became him like the leaving it,” wrote William Shakespeare in his bloody play The Scottish Labour Party – a tragedy in three acts. Now, the final curtain has fallen on the career of Richard Leonard, the Corbynite king of what is left of the formerly mighty Scottish branch of the Labour family. He resigned today and the party will now choose a new leader to take on First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who is simultaneously under huge pressure on SNP corruption and miles in front in the opinion polls ahead of this May’s elections for the Scottish parliament,

“The exceptional thing about Leonard,” says a veteran observer of Scottish politics, “is that the  opinion polling shows fewer people have heard of him now than when he started as leader.” That is quite an achievement, to be leader of a party and to make so little impact that voters forget who you are until you become the political equivalent of the Invisible Man.

His departure from the stage is potentially great news for the imperilled Union, because it allows Scottish Labour to choose a new leader who is credible and stands a chance – just a chance – of putting a dent in the Nats’ polling numbers and in May this year denying them the overall majority at Holyrood they would use to demand another referendum on breaking up Britain.

If Labour can put on, say, five points, winning back some support in its former strongholds now held by the SNP, it could be enough to deny the Nats that majority.

It is important not to get carried away here. I got carried away when Jim Murphy, then a Westminster MP, became leader of the Scottish Labour party in 2014. He is a robust campaigner and I thought he would revive Labour north of the border, but the juggernaut after the independence referendum was unstoppable. In the 2015 UK general election, Labour lost 40 of its 41 seats in Scotland. Murphy resigned.

The various contenders to take over from Leonard are, it seems, understandably nervous of suffering the same fate as Murphy.

There are three options, it seems:

Jackie Baillie is experienced and capable. She has been an MSP since 1999 and is good at taking on Sturgeon over SNP chicanery, of which there is much.

Anas Sarwar is more the charismatic street-fighter. Both Sarwar and Baillie are Labour mainstream in tune with Sir Keir Starmer’s view of the world.

Monica Lennon runs with the Corbynite left but isn’t quite as much of a leftie as she pretends, apparently.

Anything though, surely, is an improvement on Leonard.

The position is dire. The latest polling – out today in The Scotsman – shows the SNP on track to win just about everything, but it also contains a glimmer of hope for Labour in that the party is in second place. Still, the SNP scores 53 per cent of the constituency vote, with Labour on 18 per cent and the Tories on 16 per cent.

The nature of the catastrophe for Unionists is plain to see there. The pro-Union vote is split. One or other of the parties needs to break out and take some votes from the SNP. The Tories are trying under new leader Douglas Ross, but it isn’t connecting, yet.

How did all this happen? For a long spell, decades, the SNP had at most a reliable quarter to a third of the vote. When Labour began its logn collapse in Scotland in the mid-2000s post-Iraq War, another 20 per cent of the electorate went to the Nats as the party to “stand up for Scotland,” whatever that means.

Against Boris Johnson – let’s face it, a type of Englishman not wildly popular in Scotland – and with Sturgeon perceived as being good at holding Covid daily press conferences, the Nats look for now as though they cannot lose.

Nothing seems to make any difference. Not the SNP’s appalling record in office. Not Ian Blackford’s terrible waistcoats. Not the party’s internal civil war caused by the scandal over Alex Salmond and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s likely breach of the ministerial code, even though First Ministers and UK cabinet ministers have resigned for far less. The Nats cannot believe their luck. They are simultaneously disintegrating and storming to victory.

South of the border, the name Gordon Brown is being floated as a wildcard on the basis that people have heard of him. What a story that would be, a little like when Peter Mandelson (his friend then foe) returned to the cabinet under Brown as PM ahead of the 2010 general election.

Perhaps Tony Blair should stand for Scottish Labour leader, just for the comic effect of denying Brown the leadership again, as he did in 1994.

No, what is much more likely is that Brown will be the elder statesman running a commission on reforming and backing devolution. The SNP, remember, is the party that wants to destroy devolution.

Brown and Starmer are now close. This is a positive development for Labour and the Union, because Brown is highly respected in Scotland, apart from by the more deranged elements of the Nationalist tribe.

The Nationalists will scoff at this, as they scoff at everything that doesn’t involve the destruction of the UK, but the prospect of a new leader such as Baillie or Sarwar flanked by Brown and Starmer is not a bad thing. It is highly serious and solid politics compared to the Leonard fiasco. It gives Labour and Unionists a shot. The route to any Scottish Labour revival rests on the reemergence of a realistic prospect that a vote for Labour stands a fair chance of evicting the Tories in Westminster – and that is now plausible with Starmer roughly neck and neck with Boris.

Such considerations may come too late this time. Although there has been talk of delaying the Holyrood elections because of the global pandemic, the SNP is keen to get on with it, and no wonder, before the hypnotic spell of Nicola’s Covid press conferences wears off and some of the voters look around.