So Wendy Has Gone
by John McAllion
So
Wendy has gone, protesting her innocence, calling foul on the “vexatious
complaints” of her political enemies and accusing a flawed parliamentary
process of denying her natural justice. The issue of dodgy campaign
donations that has haunted her brief leadership of New Labour in Scotland
finally proved to be too much of “a distraction from the real issues
that should dominate our public life”.
Cynics will argue that Wendy has form as a quitter. When Henry McLeish
resigned as First Minister in 2001 she led a key group of supporters to the
brink of challenging Jack McConnell for the succession, only to back off
at the last moment, leaving their career aspirations exposed to McConnell’s
vindictive and inevitable retribution.
When McConnell brought her into his Cabinet as Minister for Enterprise, Transport
and Life Long Learning, she lasted only 6 months before standing down and
complaining that she had been deliberately handed an impossible portfolio
by a sworn enemy out to discredit her politically.
Others will argue that, in any case, she was never up to the job
of leading New Labour in Scotland. They will point to her repeated failure to
land a glove on Alex Salmond at First Minister’s questions. They
will recall her poor judgement of character that led her to lose a succession
of spin doctors. They will refer to her arrogance and her notorious
inability to get on with colleagues that introduced to Scottish politics
the concept of being “wendied”.
They will also cite her lack of political sense and judgment that
led her to back a Scottish Independence referendum to the delight
of the SNP and the despair of Gordon Brown. They will criticise her lack of experience
and lack of empathy for Labour’s historic links with the trade union
movement. They will question why New Labour’s chief moderniser
in Scotland failed to either update the party’s creaking internal machinery
or revive the party’s failing popularity.
However, Wendy’s 287 days at the helm of New Labour in Scotland are
important to Scottish socialists for other reasons. To begin with,
they highlight the complete bankruptcy of the idea that New Labour is a party
of the left or stands for “socialism against nationalism”,
as Wendy once infamously claimed at a New Labour conference.
The donors involved in backing Wendy’s uncontested leadership campaign
in 2007 include a multi-millionaire tax exile, a property magnate and the
owner of a successful car sales business. It also emerged in the course
of the ongoing row that New Labour has set up a “Scottish Industry
Forum” as a front organisation and conduit for channelling
business donations into the party. This business support for New
Labour is mirrored south of the border where huge donations from
property developers such as David Abrahams are currently under investigation.
Moreover, the businessmen approached to support Wendy’s campaign were
all specifically asked to give sums of money just short of the £1000
minimum at which donations have to be registered with the Electoral Commission. Clearly,
transparency was never a priority with Wendy and her team who were more concerned
to keep Scottish New Labour’s cosy relationship with the bosses’ class
hidden from public view.
Yet Tony Blair is on record as admitting that a key plank of the
New Labour project is to break the party’s financial dependence on the unions
by attracting sponsorship and support from the private sector. Having
broken this financial dependence, New Labour could then be trusted by business
to keep the unions legally shackled and dormant. Wendy and
her campaign team obviously did not want to advertise this tactic
too widely in Scotland.
There are, of course, more pressing reasons that explain why Wendy
should choose to go now. Davie Marshall is set to resign from the House of
Commons on health grounds thereby sparking a by-election in Glasgow East. Jack
McConnell, now High Commissioner in waiting for Malawi, is under
increasing pressure to stand down in Motherwell and Wishaw since
he cannot do both jobs at the same time.
The prospect therefore arose of New Labour being forced to fight
two concurrent by-elections in Scotland at a time when their support
in Britain is at its lowest level since polling began, with the SNP
riding high in the Scottish polls and with their leader in the Scottish
Parliament facing suspension for breaking parliamentary rules. Clearly, since they can do nothing
about the polls, New Labour strategists have decided to act on the one thing
that they can do something about. Wendy had to go.
Unfortunately, Scottish New Labour will stagger on under new management. A
successor will be chosen from the same talent pool in Holyrood deemed to
be not good enough to produce a challenger to Wendy just 9 months ago. There
will be lots of noise about the party appearing to be more independent of
its British management, but always stopping short of any real transfer of
power away from Westminster. The party will continue to push the same
pro-business and anti-worker policies at home and abroad while the economy
implodes around them.
The Scottish working class will continue to be taken for granted
while their interests are sacrificed on the altar of neo-liberalism. The
now imminent by-elections in the one-time Labour heartlands of Shettleston
and Motherwell will show that Scottish workers are no longer prepared
to put up with it.
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