Slapstick politics

OBSERVING Scottish Labour over the past few months has been like watching a re-run of the Seventies slapstick comedy Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, with pratfall followed by a slip on a banana skin, then stepping on a garden rake. You half expect the party to crash en masse through a shop window on a pair of roller skates.

Never mind Henry McLeish's "muddle not a fiddle". Forget Wendy Alexander's dodgy leadership campaign donation last year. The past seven days alone have shown a hitherto unsuspected talent for self-destruction. It all started with Alexander's resignation when the £950 donation from a Jersey businessman finally caught up with her. Her departure as Scottish leader was followed by a fresh crisis as the party searched for a candidate for the newly vacant Glasgow East Westminster constituency.

With dire warnings that losing the supposedly safe seat could be terminal for the premiership of Gordon Brown, volunteers were hardly throwing themselves into the fray. The panic displayed by the party turned to outright crisis on Friday night when the anointed favourite, local councillor George Ryan, did not even turn up for a selection meeting.

Faced with a crucial by-election in its heartland, Labour had seen to everything but a candidate. The city's likeable and effective council leader, Stephen Purcell, was the subject of fevered urging to step into the breach, but he quailed at the prospect.

Finally, one might imagine, a coin was tossed between two neighbouring MSPs, Margaret Curran and Frank McAveety. If so, Curran, a contender to take over from Alexander, lost and she will now be Labour's Glasgow East candidate. If elected, Curran will be a good, committed MP – but after months of criticising Salmond for holding two roles, no-one can seriously believe that it is ideal for her to run as a dual MP/MSP for up to two years.

Scottish Labour is a joke, and if Brown is this weekend bemoaning his bad luck at the events in his own backyard, then ultimately he only has himself to blame. The Prime Minister ensured that Alexander became Scottish leader last year, when his backing was enough to scare off any rivals who could have brought about a leadership contest, where policy and leaders capable of scrutinising Alex Salmond's popular SNP Government might have been forged.

And Brown's culpability goes much deeper. If pundits and voters currently view all that Scottish Labour does unsympathetically then it is as much because of errors at a national level as down to failures at Holyrood or the party's Scottish HQ in Glasgow. His premiership has been ill-starred, with global conditions and personal failings leaving his own and his Government's standing at an all-time low.

The reaction to the Glasgow East vacancy was typical. This seat, one of the safest in the UK with a 13,506 majority, should be a shoe-in for Labour, albeit with a margin likely to be much-reduced by the SNP. Instead, Labour looked in a panic from day one, calling the by-election in the middle of the Glasgow Fair holiday and then scrambling around in search of a credible local candidate.

The Scottish party may well yet redeem the situation, and go on to fight a successful campaign in Glasgow East. Regardless of the result, one good thing to have come from Labour's calamitous week is that Brown's absolute domination of the Scottish wing of the party is over. Having failed to personally persuade Purcell to stand, he appears to have had no serious say over Curran's candidacy. She secured the nomination through chaos and desperation. It is right that the decision was taken locally and not from Downing Street.

The same must be true of the bigger election facing Scottish Labour. With Curran out of the running, the leadership of the party seems certain to fall to Iain Gray, Cathy Jamieson or Andy Kerr – though rumours persist that Kerr will not stand. Others may also take part, probably from the left, and this time there must be a proper contest as the party seeks a clearer ideological future. Brown must keep his nose out of the process. He has enough on his plate at present as the UK teeters on the brink of recession. The decision as to who will lead the biggest opposition party in the Scottish Parliament must be made in Scotland.