Monica Lennon says Scottish Labour should cut up from UK celebration

Scottish Labour should cut up from the primary UK celebration if it needs to finish its “long-term shedding streak”, one of many celebration’s MSPs has claimed.

Monica Lennon mentioned Scottish Labour, which received only one seat in final month’s normal election, was nonetheless handled as a “department workplace” by London.

And she or he warned that “epic change” was wanted to keep away from additional decline.

Ms Lennon mentioned this could embrace Scottish Labour turning into a separate political celebration in its personal proper.

She mentioned the transfer would stop Scottish Labour chief Richard Leonard being undermined by UK celebration figures comparable to shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who contradicted Mr Leonard’s opposition to a second independence referendum in an interview on the Edinburgh Pageant Fringe in August.

Mr Leonard has pledged to carry a “public listening train” as a part of makes an attempt to grasp why Scottish Labour suffered such a “profound defeat” within the election.

• Labour to hold ‘listening exercise’ after defeat

Writing within the Daily Record newspaper, Ms Lennon insisted that the celebration may nonetheless remodel itself right into a “trendy, dynamic political pressure” regardless of its disastrous electoral efficiency over the previous decade.

However she mentioned it was now not tenable for selections about Scottish Labour to be “taken or undermined by colleagues exterior Scotland”, and warned: “If we appear like a stress group inside a UK celebration construction, we’ll proceed to be rejected.”

Ms Lennon, who’s Labour’s well being spokeswoman within the Scottish Parliament, mentioned: “Scottish Labour wants to face or fall by its personal selections. We both proceed on the mercy of the UK celebration’s distant constructions or we change into a celebration in our personal proper.

“This might imply elevating our personal funds, persuading commerce unions to affiliate and reaching out to voters and organisations in a extra significant approach.

“Our MPs would take the Scottish Labour whip and vote with our sister celebration at Westminster, if persuaded.”

Ms Lennon is among the many senior figures inside Scottish Labour who’ve known as for the celebration to rethink its opposition to indyref2 within the wake of the SNP profitable 48 of the 59 seats in Scotland within the election.

They’ve been joined by Scotland’s most senior commerce unionist, the STUC normal secretary Grahame Smith, who has known as on the Labour motion in Scotland to back another referendum – though he has stopped wanting really endorsing independence.

In her Day by day Report article, Ms Lennon mentioned she continued to imagine that independence would “make the poorest Scots poorer”.

However she argued that “selections about Scotland’s future throughout the UK ought to in the end be a matter for Holyrood, not Westminster”.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says she wants an independence referendum this year – however the UK authorities has already made clear it won’t give the formal consent which Ms Sturgeon says is required to make sure any vote is authorized.

Kenny MacAskill, the previous Scottish justice secretary who was elected as an SNP MP within the normal election, said on Thursday that the prospect of a second referendum being held this this 12 months have been due to this fact “slim – certainly, extra seemingly nil.”

And former SNP deputy chief Jim Sillars, a long-standing critic of the present celebration management, has claimed that Ms Sturgeon’s demand for indyref2 is “play performing” and accused her of main activists “up the backyard path”.

An SNP spokesman mentioned the celebration had obtained “repeated election mandates” from Scottish voters for a referendum to be held earlier than the top of 2020, with the exact timing a matter for the Scottish Parliament.

He added: “Scotland’s future must be in Scotland’s fingers – not these of Boris Johnson.”