Sorry, sorry, sorry
Sorry, the song tells us, seems to be the hardest word. By contrast, it tripped fairly easily from the tongue of Wendy Alexander when she addressed the Labour Conference in Bournemouth today.
She told delegates that she felt constrained to offer an apology for Labour鈥檚 performance at the Holyrood elections when, in case it had escaped your notice, they ceded power to the SNP.
In essence, it was an apology from Scottish Labour to colleagues in England and at Westminster.
There may have been one or two in the hall who perhaps felt that any apology should have gone the other way.
That perhaps Labour鈥檚 performance in Scotland was undermined by Iraq and leadership tension, emanating from London.
However, Ms Alexander resolutely declines to shuffle blame elsewhere. She argues 鈥 and an academic survey of opinion appears to confirm 鈥 that Scottish Labour had lost the trust of the voters.
Which must have stirred a few intriguing thoughts in the mind of Jack McConnell, listening in the hall.
Understandably, Mr McConnell inclines towards the view that his efforts to promote the Scottish Labour message were undermined by friendly fire.
Either way, Wendy Alexander鈥檚 speech went down well in the hall.
She was given a big build-up 鈥 by contrast with past efforts when it has sometimes seemed that the Scottish Labour leader has been smuggled on to the platform in a brief interval between the financial appeal and the debate on refuse collection.
They liked what she said 鈥 and she avoided saying anything that might upset them.
In particular, they liked it when she attempted to link the SNP and the Tories in a grand design to 鈥渂reak up Britain鈥.
The argument went thus: the SNP want to end the Union and the Tories keep going on about Gordon Brown being Scottish.
As presented in summary form like that, it didn鈥檛 bear all that much examination 鈥 although it could be argued that the Tories are occasionally tempted into rhetoric which can appear anti-Scottish in the wrong light.
And the bit they didn鈥檛 hear? Wisely, Wendy decided not to labour her argument that the party in Scotland needs greater autonomy, needs a clear division of powers with colleagues in Westminster, to match devolution.
Conference audiences, particularly on Monday mornings, generally like simple certainties.
The limited tartanisation of Scottish Labour might have been a little tricky to digest.
I'm 
Comments
Another badly scripted performance by Wendy Alexander. She failed once more to clarify her vision for Scotland or make known the reforms required to make Labour electable north of the border.
As for linking the Tories with the SNP, remind me who was shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher a week ago?
Another badly scripted performance by Wendy Alexander. She failed once more to clarify her vision for Scotland or make known the reforms required to make Labour electable north of the border.
As for linking the Tories with the SNP, remind me who was shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher a week ago?
What happened to the Labour party? they used to be radical and stand up for the working man; now all they do is bang on about the Union and invite Maggie Thatcher to downing Street for tea. I regard that as a betrayal of those who stuck by them in the 80's.
Err, what's she talking about the SNP and the Tories working together for when the Labour party has formed a wee cabal with the Tories in Scotland (along with the Lib Dems) in order to oppose independence?
Surely Wendy isn't so daft as to have forgotten that one?
Oh dear,learnt nothing,the union is dying and taking Labour in Scotland with it.
Hi there, if as the reports suggest, it was negative campaigning on Labour's part that lost them the election, why is Wendy Alexander apologising to the Westminster arm of the party? Any pronouncements by McConnell were far less prominent in the press at the time than the succession of Labour WM heavy-hitters (Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Reid) attacking the SNP as a menace. They were responsible for more high profile negative campaigning than McC and the rest of Labour in Scotland. In fact, could they have exacerbated the situation? I for one resented WM politicians campaigning in our election on such a large scale, especially when they had nothing constructive to bring to the debate but abuse.
What happened to the Labour party? they used to be radical and stand up for the working man; now all they do is bang on about the Union and invite Maggie Thatcher to Downing Street for tea. I regard that as a betrayal of those who stuck by them in the 80's.
No mention of Wendy Alexander's brother messing up the ballot papers then? Obviously, it was all Jack's fault. Perhaps we should adopt the principle that on election night you only have a choice of one candidate on the ballot, so that we always get the right result. Just like the polls they used to hold in old Communist Russia, oh yes, and Labour leadership elections.
Wendy Alexander is apologising to her party for losing the election? I think she should instead apologise on behalf of her party to the Scottish public who have had to put up with 8 years of an uninspired Lib-Lab pact.
All we got from that was tuition fees, privatised prisons, the end of social community housing, silence on the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers as well as silence on Iraq when speaking out might have mattered. (Malcolm Chisholm a notable, noble exception here).
Also if the Scottish Labour Party is now selecting its leaders on IQ alone, I'm a Politics PhD student in Manchester and am getting bored of the thesis..... although I do believe in a redistributive economy, scrapping Trident and ending private ownership of public utilities... so I probably wouldnt fit in with the Brownite agenda in Westminster.
Maybe come Independence the Scottish Labour Party might have the policy-space to actually become a social-democratic party again instead of playing Republicans to the SNP's Democrats.
Sadly, I wasn't impressed by Wendy at all.
Scottish Labour needs positivity, a move away from the small minded, blinkered view shared by too many of our compatriots.
Yeah Brian, I saw her effort too. An apology followed by an inordinate amount of SNP bashing. Saw Brown too, very inspirational, but I don't like the breaking up the union rhetoric.
So Wendy Alexander is saying "sorry" to the English because Scots voted for the SNP.
What possessed her to say such nonsense which is not only insulting to Scottish voters but also to ordinary Labour party members who decried the negative election campaign that Wendy Alexander herself fronted back in May.
If Wendy Alexander has nothing positive to say about Scots and Scotland then we should ask her to remain quiet. Lets hear no more from this person until she has learned to change her tune.
I feel many of Wendy鈥檚 words fell on deaf ears, the assembled conference gave her a fair hearing but in reality they only related to her speech when she attacked the Conservatives or her combined attacks on the SNP and the Conservatives.
It is often when speakers address other than 鈥榟ome audiences鈥 that their ability to 鈥榟old an audience鈥 can be measured, I do not know if Wendy employs a speech writer or writes her own material, I do know there is the need for a change in the sourcing of such material, Wendy was as inspiring an orator as was Jack McConnell.
Wendy Alexander didn't mention anything about more autonomy either for her party in Scotland or for additional powers for Holyrood simply because she can't deliver either. Her talk of more powers for the Scottish Parliament is for Scottish ears only - a phoney promise which she doesn't have to bother her English Party with because she cannot and will not deliver.
Brian,
would it not be better to have said "Sorry to the people of Scotland instead"? Many MSP's and Labour activists still can't accept they lost and indeed are still in denial...."it was the voters fault"....not them.
Like many I doubt the Wendy makeover will work.....as the saying goes many of us are "Scunnered with Labour". Even if they have General election and win most seats by FPTP ...this will only mask the decline temporarily.
The reality is the "Vote for A Donkey with Red Rosette" days are on the way out....many middle age to younger voters have now become disullusioned and seen through the rhetoric and Scotland is no longer their fiefdom.
And that's where Wendy Alexander shows her ignorance. The Tories do not keep on going on about how Scottish Gordon Brown is, they 'go on' about his legitimacy to legislate on education transport, planning and health issues that do not affect anyone in his constituency - or indeed anyone in
the whole of Scotland.
Afterall, Tony Blair is Scottish through and through - and I don't remember anyone saying he couldn't do the job because of his Scottishness.... Probably because he represented a constituency that was affected by the legislation he initiated.
I wish people would stop going on about the old Labour.
The cold war is over people and times have moved on whether you like it or not.
You (old Labour) never got power back then so we have to deal with what we have not what you would have liked us to have if you had been elected 25 years ago.
I wish people would stop going on about the old Labour.
The cold war is over people and times have moved on whether you like it or not.
You (old Labour) never got power back then so we have to deal with what we have not what you would have liked us to have if you had been elected 25 years ago.
I feel many of Wendy鈥檚 words fell on deaf ears, the assembled conference gave her a fair hearing but in reality they only related to her speech when she attacked the Conservatives or her combined attacks on the SNP and the Conservatives.
It is often when speakers address other than 鈥榟ome audiences鈥 that their ability to 鈥榟old an audience鈥 can be measured, I do not know if Wendy employs a speech writer or writes her own material, I do know there is the need for a change in the sourcing of such material, Wendy was as inspiring an orator as was Jack McConnell.
At what point will WENDY and her coven realise that they are distancing themselves even further from their grassroots support? Blaming Jack McConnell, the SNP, the Tories, everything and everyone but themselves and their own particular brand of sneering negativism just leads to supporters looking elsewhere for a more positive message.
New New Labour in Scotland are now as tainted as the Tories under Major.
In the old days, when Labour had the majority of seats in Scotland but lost overall in Great Britain, was there any appology to the Labour Conference?
What does this imply?
Wendy's grand conspiracy theory about the SNP being in cahoots with the Tories when in fact in Scotland her own party is in alliance with Tories in Holyrood and in councils around Scotland was nothing less than a barefaced lie to an ill-informed audience.
I had some respect for her and hoped for better but it plummetted with that. If dishonesty is her pitch to her Party conference what hope is there for her credibility in talking to the Scottish public.
The Scottish regional branch of the UK Labour party appologies to the UK Labour Party's UK conference for loosing an election.
An election that was planned and fought from London, with assistance from its collaborators, i.e. Scottish based UK owned / manipulated press and Scottish region's 大象传媒.
UK Labour's Scottish regional party has only one option, distance itself from its UK controller. Fat chance of that.
Labour is digging its own grave, the best way forward for Scots is to help them dig and remove the UK's regional Scottish branch from the map at the next UK Westminster elections!
AMc
brian,
what barefaced brassnecked wendy forgot to mention it was the BIG BRASSNECKED LABOUR MSP.MP'S who lost
power after 50yrs misrule.
she has some to say SNP.are aspiring to pinch labour's aspirations,wow you could'nt make it up. no word of what SHE has promised
in order to IMPRESS,oh no, she is so obviously making it up as she goes along,its hight time labour got their act together,and dropped the performance of the primary classroom
if they want to inspire us Scots. i for one will make up my own mind as to what i want for my GOV. and will not be bullied or LIED TO.
In the current situation; the needless deaths of Scottish troops - does not merit an apology. The 8 years of Labour mismanagement at Holyrood - does not merit an apology. The replacement of WMD on the Clyde, despite the will of the Scottish people (as expressed by their MSPs and MPs) - does not merit an apology. Decades of telling Scots that their simply not big, rich or clever enough - does not merit an apology. However, losing a democratic election (how does one even begin to properly explain the concept an election to the Labour party?) does deserve an apology! Labour failed the Scottish people, the Scottish people did not fail them: until Ms Alexander grasps this simple point she has nothing to contribute to the debate on Scotland's future.
Brian, with respect I think you read this one about the apology wrong. I don't believe that Wendy did apologise, as you say, on for the Scottish Labour Party. Even though she took liberty in asserting that was what she was doing, her Scottish Party is still largely in denial about the result at the last Scottish election.
Did you hear David Cairns on 大象传媒 Radio Scotland last Saturday morning? Unblinkingly arrogant ('we still control Scotland because we are the UK Government') and cringingly patronising ('I'm happy to meet with Wendy... and... give her the tools she needs to defeat Alex Salmond').
Scotihs Labour seems doomed in the same way as the 90s Tory Party and suffer possibly terminal damage through subservience to a creaking and centralised English domiciled party.
Wendy Alexander should not surrender apologies to such people and she made a wholly miscalculated pleading for 'English' help on a UK Labour stasge.
鈥淐onference, I am sorry for democracy existing in Scotland and that my pesky fellow countrymen had the cheek not to vote for us鈥
I found her speech quite quite insulting. Just when Gordon Brown showed the withering effects of not mentioning or bashing your opponents (copied from Salmond鈥檚 pre-election speech), Wendy trots out and breaks all the rules of name dropping your opponents and being unremittingly negative. She has learnt nothing.
At the moment Wendy seems like a multi-headed hydra not quite sure what to say, which audience, which line to take, positive or negative, inspirational or problems, more powers, status quo, attack or appeasement, how to deal with Westminster, the UK Labour party, the SNP, Alex Salmond, her own staff and colleagues.
The fact that the Labour figures of last week were saying all those things about her to journalists in week 1 shows just what disarray Labour are still in. I think they need to shut up and congregate in a shed somewhere in order to forge a joint approach. But there can be no joint approach when your MSP鈥檚 and MP鈥檚 future career priorities and self interest diverge so dramatically when trying to create such a direction.
I would also worry if I was Wendy about the significant nationalistic wing of Labour (voters not party members, often regarded as up to 40% of the Labour vote) who were swayed, and have been for decades, at the last minute. Whose pens have wavered over the SNP deep inside the ballot box since the 70s, but crossed labour at the last second because of the doom mongering. In May 2011, this will not happen to nearly the same degree. Merely by being in power the SNP have destroyed Labour鈥檚 main campaigning tool in Scotland; inexperience of the SNP as a party of government, fear of the unknown and fear that voting SNP would lead to an immediate UDI. Basically: fear.
Wendy can no longer rely the Sun and Daily Record. They too will not be able to repeat their unforgivable assault on Scottish national self confidence on May 3rd with nearly such powerful results.
But the Labour conference in Bournemouth won鈥檛 care about any of these things. They don鈥檛 care about Scotland in the slightest. They will clap Wendy till the cows come home, providing Scotland performs its innate task of returning its rent-a-mob of dozens of Labour MPs.
I'm not sure why my posting above (No 26 starting "Brian...") came out as 'anonymous', because I thought that I posted as me, Ted Harvey.
Negative campaigning is all that anyone ever does these days. The entire SNP campaign was founded on how badly-off scotland is, how bad labour are, how terrible the iraq war was (granted they have a poitn there), how much better life would be if the SNP got in.
Well they did and now what, 100 days of nothing but rain and general coldness, oh yeah and the first solid legislation to come out of the self annointed government, a bill on independence, just what we need to solve our problems,
Ken (29),
You must have been watching and listening to a different campaign than I did.
The negativity was far more pronounced on every other side, so far as I noticed, and the SNP were (characteristically?) more positive and aspirational..
But we all wear blinders to some extent.
Slainte
ed