JEREMY Corbyn needs to re-establish Labour as the party of aspiration if it is to “win back Scotland”, Lord McConnell suggests.
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Asked about the current state of the party he led from 2001 to 2007, the former MP and MSP says: “The Scottish Labour Party needs to find the right combination of pride and humility.
“For the last 12 years successive party leaders both at the UK level and in Scotland have not been proud enough of what we achieved in the eight years we ran the Government in Scotland.
"As we have been affected by electoral defeat in Scotland, the Scottish Labour Party has not been humble enough in responding to that defeat, so we need to show a bit of humility and listen and understand properly, not as a gesture or a press event, but genuinely try and understand where people are coming from and we need to have a bit more pride in some of the great achievements we put in place in the early years of the Parliament that have stood the test of time.”
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Asked if Mr Corbyn was an asset or a liability to Labour, Lord McConnell replies: “For some people he is an asset, for some people he is a liability.”
And for him? “My view very strongly would be that the Labour Party needs to remember that the best result it had in Scotland in modern times was in 1997 when we were appealing to both the left and the centre and, crucially, we were doing it in a way that sounded like we meant it.
“We were talking about people getting on under Labour, having ambitions for their children, improving their lives, not just about helping with a safety net for those who have been left behind.”
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Reflecting on his own upbringing on Arran, the son of a sheep farmer says: “I never thought there was a barrier where I could go with my life ambitions.”
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