The Scottish Labour Party is holding a post-mortem into its defeat at the Holyrood elections that saw them sink to just 17 seats, level with Reform. This pattern of decline in vote and seat share in the Holyrood elections has been well established. Leader Anas Sarwar and his deputy Dame Jackie Baillie have promised a “big review” but it is unlikely to conclude or even suggest
that their policies might be wrong.

As a result, other members have been chipping in with their penny-worths. One of these is former Central Scotland Labour – Co-op MSP Monica Lennon – who has called for the review to ask “very searching questions” including breaking away from the UK party. Another unsuccessful candidate, Jack MacConnel, has launched a “Just For Scotland” campaign to do the same. Lennon said that “what we need to do within Scottish Labour is have more control over our own destiny”. Presumably by that she means leaders who do not put her so down the
regional list that she had no hope of re-election.

Lennon blamed the defeat on Starmer telling BBC Scotland that “anyone who knocked doors for Scottish Labour in the build up to that election campaign could not get beyond the UK Government’s record”. MacConnel (not to be confused with Jack McConnell, the former First Minister now Baron McConnell of Glenscorrodale) argues that the “election losses have previously prompted Scottish Labour to turn left, right, and round in circles. Regardless, we keep losing. The question is no longer whether Scottish Labour faces a crisis. It is whether we are willing to confront its causes.”

Brian Wilson, a former MP who was a long-standing opponent of devolution and a minister in the Blair era, has lent weight to this argument, saying Scottish Labour should “act decisively” and “become an autonomous party which is not constantly bound by the constraints of dual identity”.

MacConnel claims that his supporters come from the left and right of the party and looks to the SDLP in Northern Ireland as one model of a sister-party relationship with UK Labour, but says similar electoral pact arrangements, such as those in Quebec and Bavaria, could also be adopted. The Scottish Tories under another ennobled leader, Ruth Davidson, rejected going down a similar path.