A Maiden Speech for the next Labour Leader

Let me be completely honest. I referred to Mhairi Black a lot before the election, often as a punch line. I had a very full picture in my head of who I thought she was, based on some old tweets and one deeply unedifying video clip. A daft wee lassie, who prized aggression over argument. A presumptuous upstart who was arrogantly trying to unseat one of the great intellectual forces of Scottish and UK Labour politics. How dare she? Who did she think she was?

But, of course I was very wrong, and I feel embarrassed about the sneering tone I adopted now. Her candidacy was a small rock upon which I could tent my residual need for a bit of moral superiority during a grim election campaign. She has actually emerged as a deeply impressive politician. Not impressive for a twenty year old, just impressive. Her latest contribution to cementing her burgeoning reputation came in her maiden speech in the Commons, today. It was a striking and stirring oration. Maiden speeches are easy to do well. They are not easy to do this well.

I hope every UK Labour Leadership election candidate watches the speech and pays particular attention to this passage:

“Like so many SNP members I come from a traditional socialist, Labour family. Like so many, I feel that it is the Labour party that left me, not the other way about. The SNP did not triumph on a wave of nationalism — it triumphed on a wave of hope.”

I agree with this. I wrote as much in my first clumsy stab at writing here. I’ll rehash some of it now, because I feel like Dorothy watching the sand run out in the hourglass.

Our Scottish Labour leadership candidates are starting to go some distance in fully acknowledging the deep fracture between our party and the Scottish electorate. Today’s polling acknowledges just how shattered it is.

Our UK Labour leaders also know how bad the result was, but they don’t seem to understand it at all. They continue to paint the SNP as a type of Scottish UKIP. They say the SNP put nationalism before solidarity, and flags before social justice. This bonfire of straw men, at best looks like they just don’t ‘get’ the Scottish electorate, and at worst, it helps to reinforce the estrangement, by suggesting that half of the Scottish electorate are too stupid or mendacious to make rational and decent political choices.

Large swathes of left leaning Scotland have not suddenly decided to embrace nationalism instead of social justice. These voters believe a nationalist party has now become the best vehicle for social justice. Maybe I should try and put that on a coffee mug.

I don’t agree with everything in her speech, however. It probably wasn't the best day for an SNP representative to talk about switching positions in the political weather. Most importantly, I don’t accept that the Labour Party has forgotten the very people that we are supposed to represent as she asserted. However, we have definitely forgotten how to connect with them, how to talk with them, and definitely how to inspire them. There it is yet again, the hope thing.

And with all respect to the impressive Mhairi Black, I hope she loses her seat at the next election to Scottish Labour. However she won’t, unless the leaders of the wider Labour movement begin to understand Scotland the way she does.