Who speaks for Labour in Scotland? Is it the Yorkshireman Richard Leonard, leader of the party in Scotland? Or is it the Liverpudlian shadow chancellor John McDonnell? Or perhaps the leader of the party himself, Jeremy Corbyn, born in Chippenham, and the archetypal modern Islingtonian?
It matters a good deal, because the party has to decide if, when and how it would grant permission for a second referendum on independence to Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon. She has said she wants one before May 2021, and ideally in the latter half of next year. Boris Johnson is unlikely to back it. Whether Labour would seems to depend on who you ask.
Mr Leonard, as with his predecessors, bitterly opposes indyref2, as it is called, partly because of the aversion to nationalism, partly because the Scottish Labour Party might be redundant. Mr McDonnell and Mr Corbyn, with an eye to a possible arrangement with the SNP in the House of Commons, sound more easy-going about the prospect. Mr McDonnell said as much at the Edinburgh Festival, so at least he had the good manners to stick his oar in when he was north of the border.
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Scotland means a lot to the Labour Party, and not just for sentimental reasons. Historically, big personalities in the party, from Keir Hardie, James Maxton and Ramsay MacDonald to Robin Cook, Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown, all emerged from there. Scotland would regularly send dozens of Labour MPs to sustain the party in the Commons, sufficient to ensure that Labour could, from time to time, form a government.
Only rarely has Labour managed to win in England alone – it has often relied on Scotland and Wales to govern. Indeed, had Labour returned to the sort of historic strength it used to enjoy when the 2017 election arrived, it might easily have been Mr Corbyn who found himself in No 10, albeit in a minority administration, not Theresa May. Instead, Labour won just seven of the 59 seats available, and the Tories went ahead of them on 13 seats, saving Ms May’s premiership, temporarily. By comparison, in 1997 under Tony Blair Labour gained 56 out a possible 72 seats, and the Conservatives scored nil.
It all went wrong in 2015 when, after the first independence referendum in 2014 the SNP swept Labour aside as the principal voice for Scotland at Westminster, where the group has combined a defiantly progressive and pro-EU approach with a fairly naked and transactional pursuit of the sectional Scottish interest. Labour had too long taken its Scottish support for granted and allowed its structures to atrophy, with its brightest talents, with the exception of Donald Dewar, pursuing their careers exclusively in London. Labour has not recovered since, and ranks third behind Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives, a once unimaginable state of affairs. (Ms Davidson has found herself in a similar conflict with her London branch over Brexit and other matters.)
Not much is likely to change for Mr Corbyn and Mr Leonard in Scotland at the next election, whenever it comes. It seems only sensible and prudent to try to reach some form of accommodation with the SNP, given the likely turn of events. There is little sign of a clamour for a second referendum, it is true, but the position of Scotland in the union has been rendered vastly more precarious by the 2016 EU referendum, when Scotland voted to remain – and certainly not for a no-deal Brexit. The outline Labour-SNP deal, of a second referendum on Brexit being traded for a second referendum on Scottish independence, seems like a perfectly fair swap, and one that puts democracy first, even though the way Labour is making policy is not quite in the spirit of the devolution settlement.