Jim Murphy’s resignation throws Scottish Labour into turmoil | Politics | The Guardian
Why should this throw Scottish Labour into turmoil?
The leader has resigned – good. Let’s get another one.
It might be someone inexperienced – good. They won’t be tainted by the neoliberal SPAD-U-LIKE claptrap that has harmed Labour’s reputation so badly during and since the Blair years.
There’s a challenge to the unions – then it’s good the challenger has gone. The unions created the Labour Party; of course they should play a role in its development.
Scottish Labour will need to find its sixth leader in eight years from a small and largely inexperienced pool of potential candidates at Holyrood after losing 39 of its 40 Westminster MPs in the catastrophic defeat at the general election.
But as he announced his resignation, Murphy threw down a deliberate challenge to the union movement and the Scottish party, opening up a new battle between new Labour modernisers and the traditional left.
He launched a scathing attack on Unite leader Len McCluskey, who helped orchestrate an escalating campaign against him last week. And in a further sideswipe, he accused his party’s executive of ignoring party democracy before urging them to reform Scottish Labour’s voting and policy making rules.
Source: Jim Murphy’s resignation throws Scottish Labour into turmoil | Politics | The Guardian
Personally i didn’t care for Jim Murphy and there were other Scottish labour mp’s also that i have spoke regular to over the past 5 years’ who although were popular at a local level were not popular with me as they failed miserably with the tasks in hand on committees that they were on but they themselves thought they were doing well
doing well is subjective but in my eyes they were well off the mark and those in Scotland thought like me and voted for the SNP
I wont mention any names as any skilled blogger would know who i’m talking about
I did blink when I first saw this headline, because it had me thinking, “Labour lost almost all its Westminster seats in Scotland last week, isn’t it in turmoil up there already?” Isn’t the loss of its Scottish leader, which almost all its membership north of the border were demanding anyway, just the first step towards resolving the turmoil?
Whether we like it or not, it is possible that, under our present FPTP electoral system, Scotland has been lost to the Nationalists. Personally I believe that it isn’t a case of whether Scotland will gain Independence, but when. In that case the Labour Party has to think seriously about electoral reform in England & Wales, otherwise we will left with almost permanent Tory governments.