RICHARD Leonard has been left red-faced by the deputy leader of UK Labour after she got his name wrong at the party’s online autumn conference.
Angela Rayner introduced the Scottish Labour leader as “Richard Lennon” as he gave his main speech at Labour’s Connected event today.
The slip of the tongue comes as Mr Leonard tries to relaunch his leadership of Scottish Labour after a mutiny by MSPs and complaints about his low poll ratings.
A recent poll found more than half of Scots didn’t know enough about Mr Leonard to offer a view on his performance, despite him replacing Kezia Dugdale in November 2017.
Four of his MSPs publicly called on him to quite earlier this month, but he survived the attempt to oust him, and has vowed to lead his party into next May’s Holyrood election.
Polls suggest his party could lose six of the 24 MSPs it won in 2016, compounding the loss of both its MEPs and six of its seven MPs in elections last year.
Ms Rayner’s comments will have done little to repair his reputation for anonymity.
In a session about next year’s elections, Ms Rayner, reading from a script, said: “It’s a pleasure to go to our next speaker and introduce our leader in Scotland.
“Let me say that I and Keir [Starmer] will be relentlessly focused on working alongside Richard and the Scottish Labour party to compete against the divisive nationalism and put us back in the driving seat in Scotland.
“Because everyone needs us to win in Scotland across the whole of the United Kingdom because that’s the only way wer’re going to kick the Tories out of power in Westminster and make our country truly socialist and looking after everybody.
“So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce Richard Lennon, our leader in Scotland. Richard.”
Grinning awkwardly, Mr Leonard offered “greetings and solidarity from the Scottish Labour party”.
Ahead of a visit to Scotland last week, UK leader Sir Keir Starmer wrote an article for the Scotsman which failed to mention Mr Leonard at all.
It prompted the SNP to say: “Labour's Scottish branch office manager is so anonymous his boss in London doesn't appear to remember his name.”
In his speech, Mr Leonard picthed Scottish Labour as the alternative to the “double threat” of the SNP and Tories.
He said: "At next year’s election, Scotland faces a double threat - an SNP that wants to separate Scotland from the UK, and a Scottish Tory Party doing Boris Johnson’s bidding whose Brexit betrayal is the single biggest threat to the future of the UK.
“It is only Scottish Labour that can deliver the people’s priorities.
“To address the public health crisis, to tackle poverty and inequality, to build the homes we need, to give people dignity in retirement and a National Care Service, to reverse the rundown in our public services, to put Scotland’s economy on a different path, to make full employment a central goal of public policy, to put people and planet first.”
He also called for a targeted extension of the Treasury’s furlough scheme, which is due to end on October 31, raising fears of a wave of redundancies.
He said: “The Chancellor has hinted this week that he’s being forced into a U-turn on the withdrawal of economic support, possibly by way of targeted schemes.
“If support is to be targeted by the Chancellor, I am calling for a Scottish targeted scheme that properly takes into account the requirements of the Scottish economy.”
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