Scottish Labour is expected to introduce all-women shortlists to fight key target seats in a fast-track selection process to prepare for a second snap general election.



The party has identified 20 key Westminster target seats, including all seven Glasgow constituencies, after coming far closer than expected to winning back former seats in last June’s snap election.

The party’s Scottish executive will meet on Saturday to vote on plans backed by its new leader, Richard Leonard, to choose many candidates from all-women shortlists. Leonard told the Guardian in December he was “very open to ideas about positive action.”

Labour sources say a majority of the party’s MSPs at Holyrood, including senior women MSPs, oppose all-women shortlists because local parties would object to having that imposed on them by the central party.



They argued at a parliamentary group meeting on Wednesday to reintroduce a system called twinning, where neighbouring constituencies are paired and offered the choice of deciding locally whether to run all-male or all-female contests. They say twinning has the same effect, leading to all-women shortlists but locally sanctioned.

Scottish Labour used twinning for the first Scottish parliament elections in 1999. As this was the first time candidates for the devolved parliament were selected, there were no incumbent male MSPs, so twinning was a smooth process.

Party sources say Labour is in a similar position now, with only seven MPs from Scotland’s 59 constituencies. All Glasgow’s Westminster seats are held by the Scottish National party, except Glasgow North East, making the twinning process easier.

Leonard, who is closely allied to Jeremy Corbyn, is expected to carry the vote on Saturday, when the Scottish executive is also forecast to postpone the contest for Scottish deputy leader until the summer.

That contest is also likely to be an all-women battle, although Leonard’s closest advisers fear staging it now risks reopening bitter disputes within the party over Labour’s Brexit strategy.

A majority of Scottish Labour MSPs, including the former leader Kezia Dugdale, oppose Corbyn’s and Leonard’s stance on Brexit. During the last leadership contest, Leonard’s rival Anas Sarwar campaigned for the UK to remain inside the single market – a policy Corbyn and Leonard reject.