Arrogant Labour: What they need to do now
Labour made at least three stupid, arrogant errors in this election:
- They populated the regional lists with nobodies. If they had put the constituency candidates on it (like the other parties did), they could have kept more of their best people. For instance, in Glasgow Charlie Gordon, Pauline McNeill and Frank McAveety lost their seats (amongst others); however, Labour got three list seats to compensate, but they go to Hanzala Malik, Drew Smith and Anne McTaggart. They need to start putting real politicians on the list.
- There is no such thing as Scottish Labour, and their campaigns are ultimately run by London. This was probably why they started out by attacking the Tories, when it was clear to everybody up here that the SNP were the main opponent. They need to make the leader of Labour in the Scottish Parliament the real leader of Scottish Labour.
- Why are so many of Scottish Labour’s best politicians in Westminster? Given that the SNP are keeping their best people up here, it makes it very hard for Labour to compete. They need to send some of the heavyweights back to Scotland if they want to be allowed to run this country again.
Anyway, I’m quite happy that Labour lost so many MSPs, and hopefully Scotland will now be independent in five years’ time!