ANALYSIS
KEZIA Dugdale was faced with a political dilemma yesterday in Liverpool, but the signs are she may have made a strategic blunder.
Confronted with the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as UK leader, she could have offered a cursory "well done" and left the venue promptly, but instead she tossed a grenade into the room.
"Jeremy can unite the Labour party, but he needs to want to unite it,” she said, in a clumsy and sour statement.
In an unconvincing u-turn, she later backtracked by saying Corbyn "can" unite the party and win a general election.
Dugdale opposed Corbyn’s candidacy for understandable reasons. She rightly questioned whether he could win an election. She also queried his ability to offer leadership to his fractious parliamentary group.
However, and this is a nasty pill for the electable wing of the Labour party to swallow, Corbyn won convincingly.
Party members, trade unionists and “registered supporters” had their say and the left-wing peacenik will lead his party into the next general election.
Dugdale’s response should have been to utter a bare minimum of niceties and instead focus on the huge task of rebuilding her own party.
With more autonomy on the way for Scottish Labour, Dugdale had an opportunity to put distance between the party she leads and the madness going on at Westminster.
However, she couldn’t help but jump into the swamp and prolong a pointless fight she cannot possibly win.
Her comments to the BBC yesterday further demonstrated her bad tactics. Speaking to Victoria Derbyshire, she offered the unsolicited view that Corbyn should hold shadow cabinet elections.
This was absurd for two reasons. One, how the UK leader selects his top team should not be her concern. Two, she does not even support elections for her own shadow team, a fact that makes her pronouncement even odder.
Party sources believe too much of Dugdale’s thinking, such as supporting shadow cabinet elections, is geared towards helping Ian Murray, the party’s sole MP in Scotland.
Murray is her friend, as well as her eyes and ears at Westminster, but she shouldn’t let support for him distort her party’s overall strategy.
She should, in the words of one senior party figure, let Murray “fight his own battles” and stop being his political bodyguard.
Her begrudging statement may also cause her political problems in Scottish Labour.
She has overwhelming support in her group at Holyrood, but the party’s cranky left was angered by her comments yesterday and her critics are on manoeuvres.
On Dugdale’s watch, Scottish Labour came third behind the Tories in May and could easily lose over 100 seats at next year’s local government election. Her political capital was running at half a tank, even before yesterday.
The wider lessons for her are obvious: focus on your obvious strengths as leader; seek better advice from a wider group of people, and stop acting like a bit-player in an increasingly tedious sit-com.
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