Has Cathy come home?

I yesterday returned from a short holiday in Scotland, so what did I do during this break? I attended a Labour Party meeting sad I know! But it wasn’t any ordinary Labour Party meeting it was a husting of the leadership candidates of the Scottish Labour Party. As a result of the resignation of Wendy Alexander an election was called, which has been contested for the first time. There are three candidates for the Leader position Andy Kerr, Iain Gray and Cathy Jamison. I would not consider any of these as such to be on the left but I was aware that many comrades in the Campaign for socialism the sister group of the LRC were personally supporting Cathy (she used to be a supporter of the Grassroots Alliance and was on the NEC as part of that slate but since parted company) although the organisation had quite correctly not formally backed her.

The two men spoke first and frankly it was vacuous nonsense focused on what positions they held and bash the nationalist no mention of policy, Kerr if anything was to the right of Gray who is apparently Browns favoured candidate. However Cathy Jamison did talk about a need to change direction a need for policy changes that are supported by the wider labour movement she talked about working with trade unions and for the party to be involved in making policy, whilst much of this was vague it was considerably more political and to the left of the other two.

One question asked from the floor was about standing up for Scotland, clearly part of that question was about would the candidates always support Westminster policies of a Labour government or would they adopt the “clear red water” strategy that has made Rhodri Morgan a relatively popular first Minster in Wales. The two men simply ducked the question and attack the nationalists again! Cathy to her credit answered the qustion and did accept on very limited occasions she would be prepared to disagree with the National Labour leadership although she was somewhat vague as to the circumstance around such a move.

I came out of the husting believing was I in Scotland I would have little choice but to vote for Cathy Jamison despite the history of privatising the prison service and her dreadful appearance on question time were she seemed to support DNA collection of all UK citizens from birth. Sometimes however you can only go on what someone is saying right now that would be her; if she is elected I hope Scottish Labour party members will hold her to her statements in the hustings.

That brings me to the Deputy Leadership elections were the left do have a candidate Bill Butler. As Cathy Jamison who was deputy leader is standing for the leader the election for deputy is also taking place. Electing Bill would be an important part of ensuring that if Cathy is elected there would be someone to constantly remind her of the statements made when standing for leader.

Bill made some very good points and was particularly effective at dealing with why MSP's and MP's should be prepared to break the whip mentioning Iraq war and Trident specifically. He described the need of wide ranging policies decided by Labour Party conference and this would be able to provide a basis for how all MSP’s should be voting. He suggested the frame work for that was already there with 2007 policy agreement with the Trade Unions (the Scottish Warwick but better). I didn’t entirely agree with every thing he said such as his view that PFI should compete on a level playing field with other public sector financing, why it needs to be in the field at all I don’t know.

However the election of Bill would be a huge step forward for the left not just in Scotland but would also be a beacon for the rest of the country. There is only one other candidate in the deputy election Johann Lamont she did in many way appear to be to the left of Gray and Kerr but Bill was head and shoulder above her in both polices and his leadership qualities.