LIKE the proverbial buses, Scottish Labour Party members thinking that they might be stuck with Starmer and Sarwar forever are suddenly offered two new leaders, although the new Scottish Labour Party leader will at least be subject to an actual vote. Whether that means they will have a meaningful choice, is another matter. 

As I write, there are currently three candidates who have announced their intention to stand. Michael Marra MSP is part of the current leadership team of Scottish Labour and since April 2023 he has not only been shadow cabinet secretary for finance, but the author of the Scottish Labour Party’s insipid election manifesto for May’s Scottish parliamentary elections. As candidate for the leader’s job he now says Scottish Labour needs to find its moral purpose — strange for a man who, in a vote in the Scottish Parliament, supported the decision to introduce means-testing for the Winter Fuel Payment. 

A “surprise” candidate, reported by the Morning Star last Wednesday, is Joe Fagan. Previously leader of South Lanarkshire Council from 2022 till his election to the Scottish Parliament this year, Fagan, like Marra, is heavily associated with the Scottish Labour Party’s ancien regime. He has the support of Neil Bibby MSP, a close ally of the departing Anas Sarwar as well as, according the Daily Record, Jackie Baillie the current deputy leader and eminence grise of Scottish Labour’s dominant right-wing faction.

The third candidate is Monica Lennon. She will be setting out her stall in this paper, a clear indication of the political stable she is coming from. Monica will find not it easy to get onto the ballot paper, ironic given Scottish Labour’s commitment to gender equality. The party machine has been busy doing what party machines do, hoovering up support from the MSPs and MPs that candidates need to be nominated by the usual combination of threats, promises and entreaties. Although, to be honest, the prospect of another right-wing leadership is probably welcome to most of Scottish Labour’s MSPs and MPs who were largely selected on the basis of loyalty to Starmer and Sarwar. 

If continuity Sarwar is all that Scottish Labour members are offered, it will be a catastrophe for the party. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, the Scottish Labour Party is moving inexorably towards the periphery of Scottish politics. The biggest drops in its support in the Scottish Parliament happened between 2007 and 2011 from 46 to 37 seats — a clear reaction to Blair and the economic crisis, and then between 2011 and 2016 from 37 to 24 seats as a consequence of a rejection of the Better Together campaign, where the Scottish Labour Party allied itself with the Tories to win the independence referendum.

These two key issues — the economy, including funding services, and the constitution remain the biggest barriers to Scottish Labour being able to engage once again with the Scottish people and they are exactly what the Scottish Labour leadership has been unable to address since the beginning of its demise in 2007. Instead, they have argued that the SNP has been inadequate (it has) and that Labour would do better especially if it is in power in Westminster and Holyrood. We know how that turned out under Starmer with his policies damaging Scottish Labour’s chances. Labour in power in Westminster has so far failed to address the serious decay undermining the Scottish and northern English regional economies, leading inevitably to less money to fund local government and public services. 

Burnham could help change this. Unison Scotland has challenged candidates to say how they would save the potential massive 20,000 job loss in local government predicted by Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

A left-wing candidate could argue that more money in the UK block grant should be allocated to local government funding; that the Scottish government should allocate local governments multiyear settlements to help effective long-term planning and that the Scottish government should bring back services in-house, saving significant sums of money and jobs. 

It isn’t only local government that faces a crisis in funding. So too do many if not all of Scotland’s key services. A left-wing candidate could look to the work produced by the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) “Scotland Demands Better: Fairer Taxes for a Fairer Future” to help find funding solutions. These include replacing the council tax with a proportional property tax as well as land, wealth and other taxes, such as a private jet tax, online sales tax, and a levy on alcohol retailers.

And a left-wing candidate could out-Burnham Burnham by arguing that the Scottish Parliament should take immediate action to create a national care service providing well-paid, highly skilled jobs which would help enormously with the welfare of the citizens of Scotland and consequently its economy.

Fundamentally, the Scottish Parliament needs to arrest the destruction of Scotland’s manufacturing base which despite all the closures remains a significant driver of the Scottish economy. It could do this, for example, by demanding the powers the Scottish Parliament needs, in particular borrowing powers, to build an economy that is democratically owned and controlled, halting the increasing external ownership of the Scottish economy.

On the constitution it is possible to argue that the Scottish Parliament should have the right to decide whether an independence referendum should be called without accepting that independence for Scotland is a good thing. Instead, a left-wing candidate could argue that what we need, in line with Burnham’s thinking, is an end to House of Lords to be replaced with a senate of the nations and regions and increased economic powers for the Scottish Parliament.

Those are the kind of demands that a left-wing candidate could make and win — not only the votes of Scottish Labour Party members — but a majority of Scots aching for economic and social renewal. But that will only be possible if a left-wing candidate is allowed to stand in the first place.