THE result of the Scottish Labour leadership election will be revealed shortly before 11am today (Sat) at a special event at the Emirates Arena in the east end of Glasgow.
The candidates will be told the news privately before they all troop on stage for the formal announcement and speech-making.
How dramatic this will be depends on the result and the margin of victory. The bookies are not expecting much excitement, having made Jim Murphy the odds on favourite. He was 1/5 with Ladbrokes, who said 90 per cent of the money they've taken has been staked on the East Renfrewshire MP.
Those numbers cut no ice with Neil Findlay's campaign, it should be said. The MSP's team reckon they will at least run Mr Murphy close and could pull off a surprise if they capture 70 per cent of the votes from affiliated union members. The nature of the electoral college, in which a third of the vote goes to MPs, MSPs and MEPs, a third to party members and the final third to trade unionists, means predictions are probably unwise.
One thing is clear, however, from talking to grassroots Labour folk this week: whoever is chosen to succeed Johann Lamont faces a daunting task. "What does the new leader have to do?" was an obvious question. Ominously, the answers might give Mr Murphy, Mr Findlay or fellow MSP Sarah Boyack, the 25/1 outsider, sleepless nights.
"Activists on the ground know what the public are saying," said one. "We are not being told Labour isn't socialist enough. We are being told we are c***. We're rotten." And he turned out to be one of the more optimistic footsoldiers I contacted, confident that with the right leader his party could defy the polls and hold all but a couple of its 41 Westminster seats in May's general election. Not that it would be easy, though. "What we need to do is look like a professional, 21st Century political party," he said: "We need to streamline the message and manage who speaks for us. We need simple, direct messages and we need to keep hammering them. The SNP have been doing it for the past 10 years."
Feedback on the doorsteps, he said, suggested people who were identified as Labour supporters during the referendum campaign were sticking with the party and a few Tories were talking of voting tactically to keep the SNP out, fearing a large bloc of Nationalists at Westminster would turn the referendum into a neverendum. Labour could only capitalise, however, if it was disciplined and positive. "We needs a slap of authority, a leader who will take the party by the scruff of the neck and say, this is how it's going to be for the next five years. We cannot just keep attacking the SNP. Their arguments were demolished during the referendum campaign but people were not listening, they were just hearing the mood music. We need to give people some hope, say what we'd do."
Another party stalwart urged the new leader to be "inclusive" and avoid at all costs the sort of machine politics that for years has filled the top jobs, selected candidates and generally exercised power within the party.
A third told me: "The public are really angry with the Labour Party. Half the country blames Labour for stopping independence, the other half blames Labour for nearly allowing the Nationalists to win the referendum.
"But it's wider than that. We're feeling a backlash from the anti-politics mood that's out there. People see Labour as part of the establishment. This came out during the referendum campaign; we were seen as defending a broken political system." The activist feared Labour would be "skelped" in May.
All agreed the new leader needs to make an immediate impact. Whoever wins must find a swift way of showing it's not business as usual for Labour. A reshuffle of the Holyrood front bench team should promote younger MSPs. Internal party reforms should be focused on campaigning. In the longer term, Labour must explain how it would handle the ongoing cuts to public spending in Scotland. It must find fresh, strong candidates for the 2016 Holyrood election.
That's quite an in-tray. There are plenty of reasons for all the candidates to be nervous this morning.
ends
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