Ex-minister and party insiders back Kezia Dugdale to remain as leader
A former Scottish Labour minister and party insiders have backed Kezia Dugdale to remain as leader, but said she must provide a coherent message on the constitution.
A former Scottish Labour minister and party insiders have backed Kezia Dugdale to remain as leader, but said she must provide a coherent message on the constitution.
Frank McAveety, a minister under Jack McConnell and now leader of Glasgow City Council, said Labour "have to face the facts of the constitutional issue" after he watched "Red Clydeside painted yellow" as the pro-independence city exclusively turned to the SNP.
Mr McAveety faces a battle for his political future in the next big electoral test in the council elections next year.
Writing in the Daily Record, he said: "Labour must consider coming out in favour of a genuine federal Britain. That would be home rule for Scotland in a federal Britain.
"The other parts of the Union would get equal powers for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
"The House of Commons would be the federal chamber to which the home rule parliaments would send delegates.
"The precise details need working out - but if everything stays the same, we are tobogganing downhill to an independent Scotland and the break-up of the UK.
"And what about the Labour Party in Scotland in a federal Britain? They would be an autonomous party - an independent Scottish Labour Party arguing for real policies for the people but staying with the security of a UK still united in many ways."
Home rule in a federal Britain is a cause that has long been championed by the Liberal Democrats, Labour's former junior partners in the Scottish Executive who failed to gain seats at the Scottish election.
Former Labour special adviser Paul Sinclair said Ms Dugdale is the party's "last chance" to save itself from oblivion, despite "her disastrous strategy" in the Scottish election.
Writing in the Scottish Daily Mail, he advised "self-seeking individuals" to stop the "pointless sacrifices" that have followed every defeat.
He said: "If Scottish Labour is to survive, that can't happen this time. Yes, she has made mistakes, but Kezia Dugdale is the party's last chance - if that opportunity has not yet passed them by."
He added: "Labour needs a new story for Scotland. And it will only be able to craft one if it stops speaking to itself and truly listens to the concerns of Scots.
"If not, Thursday night might turn out to be the beginning of the final chapter in the history of a once-great party.
"The party which has been deaf for a decade might just end up dead."
Mr Sinclair said Scottish Labour "have learned nothing" over the last decade - a period in which he advised both former prime minister Gordon Brown and former Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont.
He said if Scottish Labour "isn't dead, it is at best profoundly deaf" and "illiterate in sign language", and questioned Labour's plan to "increase taxes for everybody to reduce austerity".
Labour "shot itself in the foot" by rejecting nuclear weapons at a time when it wasn't even an election issue, in the knowledge that Ms Dugdale supported Trident renewal, he said.
He accused the party of "sullen self obsession, arrogance, desperation and serial acts of stupidity", by first ignoring Scotland's constitutional divisions and then attempting to address them with "plot-turns of a Latin American cable channel soap opera".
Writing in The Sun, fellow former adviser Craig Davidson also backed Ms Dugdale, but said she needs to find a consistent position on the constitution.
"If Labour are to govern Scotland, they must reach out to Yes voters and show that Holyrood, not Westminster, can change lives," he said.
"No one seriously thinks that a change of leader is what Labour needs. Kez needs to find something to say on the constitutional question," he said.