Richard Leonard also hits out at SNP linking of second independence vote to Brexit and defends voting for article 50 in first newspaper interview since his election

Young people now see Labour as the radicals in Scotland, according to the party’s new leader, Richard Leonard.

In his first UK newspaper interview since his convincing victory in November’s leadership election, Leonard also said treating Scotland differently as Nicola Sturgeon demanded because it voted to remain in the EU would be like cordoning off Glasgow because the city voted yes to independence.

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The former GMB officer, whose leadership campaign was directed by former Jeremy Corbyn aide Simon Fletcher, and who won with strong union backing and tacit support of the Westminster leadership, insisted that “I do not consider myself to be a Corbynista”.

He also believed that Sturgeon’s push for a second independence referendum last year had led to a fragmentation of the yes movement and attracted the sort of personal hostility he had not seen “since the days of Margaret Thatcher”.

And, as claims are made at a UK level that the leftwing pressure group Momentum is attempting to remove more moderate council and parliamentary candidates, Leonard confirmed that all candidates who stood in this year’s general election in Scotland “should at the very least be on the shortlist” for the next selection, regardless of their affiliations.

Leonard is the fourth leader of the party in as many years, since the resignation of Johann Lamont after Scottish Labour’s bruising participation in the pro-union campaign in 2014, when she famously described Westminster as treating Scottish Labour as a “branch office”. How does he propose to make explicit that he leads the Scottish party, particularly given his closeness to Corbyn?

“What I’m not going to do is look for manufactured disputes [with the UK party],” he said, suggesting that where differences did arise he expected them to be around policy, with taxation and Trident being current examples.

“I was clear in the leadership contest and I’ll be clear in this role that my mandate came from the members of the Scottish Labour party and it’s to them I’ll be accountable.”



As for Corbyn, Leonard said: “I’ve been a member of the Labour party for 35 years, I’ve never been in a faction, I’ve never been beholden to any individual and I don’t intend to start now.

“I do not consider myself to be a Corbynista. The similarities between myself and Jeremy Corbyn are about our approach to politics. I’ve been a longstanding member of the Labour party, and my views have been pretty consistent. That’s meant I’ve been off-message and out of step from time to time, but I do think that the result of the leadership election signifies that maybe I am now in step and I do represent the direction that members of the Scottish Labour party want the party to go in.”

Scottish Labour activists reported a significant change on the doorstep during their general election campaigning, in particular among younger voters who they might formerly have expected to be supporting the SNP. “Over the past few months we’ve started to win back lost Labour voters, people who voted SNP, Green in recent elections, there’s a definite shift taking place. There’s a buzz amongst young people. They are seeing the Labour party as the radical party.”

Leonard himself believes that the linkage of a second independence vote to Brexit was “a very polarising political manoeuvre” by the SNP which resonated badly on the doorsteps. “People went from being reasonably benign about Nicola Sturgeon as a politician to being either supportive or absolutely hostile in a way that I’ve not seen hostility towards a political leader since the days of Margaret Thatcher.”



“I also found quite a lot of people who were yes supporters who were absolutely apoplectic that they had voted to leave the EU and their vote to leave was being completely ridden roughshod over by this supposition that everybody who supports the SNP supports independence in Europe.”

“So I think there was a fragmentation of support around the yes campaign that in turn has laid the ground for people to be more receptive to the radical politics of where the Labour party now is. And now we are the party of change that wants to see a redistribution of power, that’s a really powerful message.”

Leonard said that party policy was still to vote with the SNP against the EU withdrawal bill as put before Holyrood “because the shape of the Tory Brexit deal doesn’t look a very attractive one”. But he said that he had no regrets about voting for article 50 in a symbolic vote in the Scottish parliament, despite the fact that the majority of Scots – and Scottish Labour supporters – voted to remain within the EU.

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“Those people that were suggesting that we should block article 50 included those that took the view that the political elite had some sort of mandate over and above the mandate they were given by the people, and I think that’s one of the reasons why politics has been drawn into some disrepute. In my view elected politicians have to respect the view of the people.”

Does he feel out of step with the view of Scottish people, given that 62% voted to remain in the EU in 2016? “I feel comfortable and in step with my own democratic principles. The franchise for the 2016 referendum was the UK and you can’t try and change the goalposts afterwards. It’s like saying in 2014 Glasgow voted yes, Dundee voted yes, therefore they should be cordoned off. It doesn’t work like that.”