Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s impromptu groove at his party conference last weekend was more dad dancing than interpretative dance, but it was open to interpretation.
It’s hard to imagine previous Scottish Labour leaders dancing, whether through temperament or circumstance.
Kez Dugdale could likely cut a rug. But she had little to celebrate during her tenure. I’d wager that Johann Lamont can’t resist when Come on Eileen is played at a family gathering.
But the likes of Jim Murphy and Iain Gray give little inkling of succumbing to Saturday night fever. Richard Leonard probably regards dancing as a symptom of bourgeois decadence.
But Sarwar is a different sort of Scots Labour leader. One comfortable in the age of social media and wacky photo ops.
He felt compelled to have a little boogie during a performance by the Sistema Scotland organisation. This is a charity that puts musical instruments, and the confidence and discipline that comes with playing, in the hands of Scotland’s most deprived communities.
The Scottish Government’s funding for school music programmes has faced uncertainty in recent years. The invitation to Sistema Scotland to perform and Sarwar putting it in the spotlight was not accidental.
First Scottish Labour conference in 20 years that felt upbeat
His moves also highlighted that this was the first Scottish Labour conference in nearly 20 years that felt upbeat.
If past conferences have been comparable to the drone of later period Radiohead this one could’ve been soundtracked by S Club 7.
Keir Starmer warned Labour must not get carried away with by-election successes and buoyant polls.
Indeed some have questioned whether Sarwar’s dance was a misstep, listen closely enough and there is an echo of Neil Kinnock’s triumphalist tone on the eve of the 1992 general election. Which he lost. Only results will determine if Sarwar was on the beat or out of time.
Sarwar’s cheery approach also suggests this is a man unbothered by the accusations of betrayal sent his way, most pertinently in these pages, by the Scots oil and gas industry.
Those 100,000 folk whose jobs are apparently set to be binned courtesy of Labour’s windfall tax are unlikely to take kindly to seeing the axeman tripping the light fantastic on stage.
Sarwar is right to reject the overblown tone of alarm.
The privatised utilities squealed before Gordon Brown clobbered them with Labour’s original windfall tax back in 1997. They predicted nightmarish job cuts. But the money was pumped into job creation schemes. The economy boomed. And shareholders of those same companies continue to live high on the hog to this day.
And, of course, Labour’s electoral appeal went undented.
That is the best lens through which to view Scottish Labour’s reaction to the current controversy about whether their plans to hike taxes to Norwegian levels and extend the term of the levy amount to a ‘stab in the back’ or ‘a kick in the teeth’ or, if you want to dial it all the up to 11, “one of the biggest betrayals in Britain’s industrial history”.
AGCC laid on a masterclass in lobbying
Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce has laid on a masterclass in lobbying and representing their members’ interests. Anyone who thinks Keir Starmer would’ve referenced the issue in his Glasgow speech without the preceding stooshie is mistaken.
But he’s not backing down on this one.
Because he doesn’t perceive an electoral advantage in doing so.
Starmer’s changes of direction, including canning the pledge to invest £28 billion in the green transition, are driven by a monomaniacal drive to win the election. He wants to help people. And he understands that you can do that on a macro scale only with access to the levers of power.
The question is, does the road to Number 10 run through Aberdeen? Probably not.
North-east seats are solidifying as Conservative-SNP battlegrounds with a few Lib Dem variables thrown in. Labour doesn’t have a look in.
One delegate at Labour’s Scottish conference claimed that 26,000 votes could make the difference across 14 Scottish seats. The bit he didn’t say out loud is that none of those seats are out with the central belt.
They are places where voters may feel they have seen little of the wealth generated by the success of North Sea oil and gas and are therefore unlikely to be swayed by those predicting the windfall tax will leave an apocalyptic economic fallout.(There’s certainly an argument to be made that the bigger betrayal in industrial history was the failure of the Thatcher governments to establish a wealth fund to capture proceeds from the nation’s natural resources and instead spaffed the income on tax cuts for yuppies.)
Labour would settle for a majority of 14. And they can feel it is within reach. Scotland will have a role in delivering any majority. But not the north-east.
James Millar is a political commentator, author and a former Westminster correspondent for The Sunday Post
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