Scottish Labour failed to put Holyrood at centre, says Kezia Dugdale
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Version 0 of 1. The Scottish Labour party has been slow to recognise that the Scottish parliament is the centre of the country’s political life, the party’s leadership hopeful Kezia Dugdale has said. “I was 15 years old when Tony Blair became prime minister and I was too young to vote in the first Scottish parliament elections back in 1999, so for the whole of my adult life the Scottish parliament has been at the centre of Scottish politics,” said Dugdale, who is the deputy leader of Scottish Labour and a member of the Scottish parliament. “But that’s not necessarily been how the Scottish Labour party has viewed it,” she added. Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme on Wednesday, Dugdale said: “Time and time and time again we’ve made that mistake of not focusing front and centre on the role of the Scottish parliament. And the more powers that we bring to Holyrood and the more that the Scottish parliament plays a role in people’s everyday lives, the more primacy we have to give it.” Dugdale is so far the only declared candidate to replace Jim Murphy as the leader of Scottish Labour. Murphy resigned despite surviving a confidence vote from the Scottish Labour executive shortly after the party lost 40 of its 41 MPs to the Scottish National party in last month’s general election. Dugdale’s comments came after the former leader of the Scottish Labour party, Johann Lamont, who stepped down in 2014 after complaining that Labour’s Westminster leadership treated her party like “a branch office of London”, gave her first broadcast interview since her resignation. Speaking to the BBC, Lamont said the instinct of the Labour party in times of crisis was to “change the leader, then sit back, fold your arms and wait to be disappointed because they’re sure it’s not going to deliver”. “We can’t do that this time,” she said. “We need to elect a leader not on a short-term contract, but a long-term appointment for the long haul. There is no quick fix to this, there are not any ploys, not any gimmicks, that will get us through the next period.” Dugdale said she agreed with “much if not all” of what Lamont had said and added: “I know that she’s got a lot more to say in the weeks and months ahead.” |