Labour's Dream

I have spent my few days holiday reading Anthony Seldon's 'Blair Unbound' which examines Blair's leadership from his second general election victory until his departure after the third.

It is bloody: and if there is even half a truth in it then Ed Balls, as Brown's rottweiler, comes out very badly indeed. The only thing that comes out worse is the Press which is portrayed intentionally or otherwise as a voracious, slavering beast intent on bringing Blair down - the fact that it was so (apparently) ably helped by people who let their own ambition run ahead of them - is what makes it all so tragic.

The constant thread running through the narrative is an inference that Blair represents the 'right' and Brown the 'left' while, in truth, it often seems to this reader anyway, that there was only ever nuances between them and the fight was really always just about who was Number 1.

I have both witnessed and endured similar behaviour even at our daft wee Council level where briefing and counter briefing became, for a while and for some people, the norm. One thing which always surprises me is why people give 'anonymous' briefings - what kind of vanity is it to see your opinion repeated in newsprint but not attributed? [and anyway it's never too difficult to work out who's behind it - for example, I only ever heard 1 person use the phrase 'threw the toys out the pram,' or 'it's a hot potato' etc. Words, like handwriting, give people away every time]

Politics thrive on huge egos married too frequently to low self esteem, vaulting ambition and inferior ability: it is fiercely competitive, often ugly and too many people come into it for all the wrong reasons yet still, it remains a noble profession which when done well, has remarkable transformative powers.

All of which brings me to the current Scottish leadership competition where we definitely need a competition, don't need more of the same or an exercise in who can be the most anodyne either.

What we do need is to question why we continue to fight the Nats on the one territory we can never beat them on.

Labour is an international party who can't ever be more Scottish than the Nationalists. Their whole raison d'etre is based on an accident of birth and some imagined paradise where only Scottish angels flutter.

What we also need is to ask is if the leadership campaign should concentrate on bread and butter issues. Frankly, who really cares what Labour in Scotland has to say right at this moment in time about law and order, anti social behaviour or about anything else domestic?

Labour isn't in charge inScotland anymore or even near to influencing the agenda and there's no use pretending otherwise. Instead, we should be using our considerable talents and energy, searching for a way to revitalise our vision of social justice and equality and fairness.

Scratch every person and the blood beneath the skin is red: not blue or white, not yellow, black or green - just red. Common humanity, a common sense of fairness, the shared human need to leave things better for those who follow us, the very human yearning to aspire to a greater cause than ourselves is what we need to be thinking about - how do we express that in ways that resonate for the 3rd millennium?

The centre ground in politics is crowded and over-populated; there's scarcely anything to choose between any of the mainstream parties (though the social policies of both SNP and Tories converge more than people think and this will become increasingly apparent as the minority government progresses) so more than ever, the 'vision thing' is what counts.

The Nationalists have their wee dream of a free Scotland (free from what, though?), the Tories are dreaming of Camelot mark 3 (Kennedy, Blair, Cameron) and the Liberals bless them, long for the day they can come up with a coherent policy that gives different things to different families living in the same street.

What is Labour's dream?

I, for one, am looking to our candidates in this leadership campaign to answer that question.