SHADOW Scottish Secretary Lesley Laird claims Jeremy Corbyn is the most popular politician in Scotland and was largely responsible for Scottish Labour winning seven Westminster seats.
Laird became Scotland's most senior Labour MP when Corbyn appointed her to his shadow cabinet just six days after she won the Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency at the General Election in June.
Corbyn, she believes, is more popular than Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, as well as Tory leader Ruth Davidson and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
She said Corbyn had “huge amounts of credibility on the doorstep" in working class constituencies.
Laird makes the claim in this week's Sunday Herald People Behind the Power interview. When asked if Corbyn is the most popular politician in Scotland she responded: “I think he probably is right now. I think he’s attracting a lot of warmth. I think he’s attracting a lot of excitement.”
She said Corbyn's election was decisive in Scottish Labour increasing the number of its MPs from one to seven in last month's election.
She highlighted her win in a seat formerly represented by Gordon Brown as an example of such gains through the Corbyn effect. She claimed his radical manifesto had won back voters in the working class constituency who abandoned Labour for the SNP in 2015.
Laird overturned an almost 10,000 SNP majority and won the seat by 259 votes, said: "Nobody saw it coming," she said "unless you were on the doorstep and Jeremy Corbyn was a key factor. I think the manifesto, which clearly had Jeremy’s hands all over it, was a key turning point in the election.
“Jeremy Corbyn had an image of being portrayed in a certain kind of light, but I think what some of his live appearances on TV did was to blow that myth away. People saw here was a really genuine principled individual who very many people liked and I think that was in very real contrast to the image that was being portrayed by Theresa May at that point.
“So I think if people were looking at who they could relate to most in the campaign when they got to know him that person was Jeremy Corbyn.
She added: "You know things have changed when people actually stop you and want to talk about the manifesto and that was certainly very evident across my constituency. People were really inspired by the fact that here was someone talking about what could be done as opposed to what couldn’t be done.
"That’s what got people to turn out for rallies in Glasgow. If Labour had turned up in Glasgow at one point you might have got a very different reaction."
Her comments come just weeks after Scottish Labour's deputy leader Alex Rowley said Corbyn had won seats for the party in Scotland by appealing to voters on both sides of the independence divide.
She said: "There's no doubt on the doorstep that there were people who were coming back to Labour who had come from the SNP.
"I think people want a progressive socialist party in Scotland. After all those years of austerity people saw that as a way forward and I think that people saw that socialist agenda and I think that did attract people."
Corbyn is to hold a series of mass rallies in Scotland next month in a bid to target marginal seats held by the SNP. And Laird predicted Corbyn's radical approach could lead to more Scottish Labour gains at the next election.
She said: “We were pretty close in a number of areas and if it had gone on for another week we would have won more seats."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel