Last month's referendum certainly has the politicians dropping like flies. The latest to go is Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont. See the Graun here. George Eaton's analysis here deserves a perusal as well.
Much quoted are Lamont's scathing words about the Westminster leadership:
The Labour Party must recognise that the Scottish party has to be autonomous and not just a branch office of a party based in London.
She's right, and the criticism of over-centralisation is all the more telling coming, as it does, from someone who is a long way from being a left-wing rebel. The lording it over Scotland by Westminster Labour isn't utterly unique: absolutely definitive of New Labour was a paranoid centralism and utter fear of any public Labour figure saying anything that lacked the imprimatur of the leader's office (Lamont herself was apparently prevented from criticising the Bedroom Tax). This centralisation in the cause of the New Labour project is a good part of what lies behind Miliband's tethering of Lamont, and is equally apparent in dodgy selections, on-the-hoof policy decisions bypassing Conference and the NPF, anti-democratic 'reforms', and a good deal else on top of that.
This having been admitted, the Lamont saga cannot be entirely explained as the fallout of UK-wide institutional power-grabbing by the Labour leadership. There is a distinctively Scottish element to the tale. And with this in mind, I leave you with a question: might it not be the case that it is inevitable, for as long as the Union persists, that the London offices of UK-wide parties will be forced, by the logic of union itself, to severely restrict the autonomy of their colleagues north of the Border?
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