 | 'We have got to ask: are the structures of the party correct in Scotland? Is Jack McConnell the leader of the Scottish Labour party or is he leader of the party in the Scottish Parliament?' Former Labour party general secretary Alex Rowley, 11 th February 2006. |  |
SENIOR Labour figures are demanding a root-and-branch reform of the Scottish party amid claims that their leader, Jack McConnell, ducked out of fighting his Liberal Democrat coalition partners at the Dunfermline by-election.
One close ally of Gordon Brown has questioned whether McConnell should have his role tightly restricted to leader of the party's MSPs, rather than being able to control the operation in Scotland.
Recriminations continued apace yesterday after Thursday night's astonishing by-election result, in which Lib Dem candidate Willie Rennie over-turned Labour's 11,500 majority.
The shock defeat is blamed by many on the mixed messages issued by McConnell and Brown over the Forth Road Bridge.
In what will be seen as an effort to calm tensions in the Labour Party, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, last night claimed that Tony Blair and Brown were now in effect running Britain through a 'dual premiership' and that the Chancellor was being given unprecedented licence to argue his case to be Prime Minister while Blair was still in office.
However, Clarke also told the BBC's Politics Show that the Chancellor should face a leadership challenge when he comes to succeed Blair.
Brown's status as effectively joint Prime Minister will be underlined when he makes a major speech tomorrow on the subject of national security and will reveal that three terror attacks on the UK have been averted since last July.
Brown will claim that the evidence of threats against Britain boosts the arguments for controversial plans for ID cards and new laws outlawing the glorification of terror.
Former party general secretary Alex Rowley, Brown's election agent, said: "The people have spoken in Dunfermline, but there is a need to look at why they believed the Liberal Democrats were the better party.
"We have got to ask: are the structures of the party correct in Scotland? Is Jack McConnell the leader of the Scottish Labour party or is he leader of the party in the Scottish Parliament?"
Lib Dems leader and Deputy First Minister Nicol Stephen said the Holyrood elections in 2007 now had the "potential for major change".
Return to home page