Murnaghan Interview with Kezia Dugdale, MSP, leadership candidate for the Scottish Labour Party

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now last month saw Labour’s worst election result for decades of course but it was Scotland that bore the brunt as the SNP swept the board, the party was all but wiped out north of the border left with just one solitary Labour MP.  A slew of Labour big beasts lost their seats including the Scottish Leader Jim Murphy so how does it come back from there?  Well I’m joined now by Kezia Dugdale who is standing to become the party’s next leader and she is in Edinburgh from where she joins me now.  A very good morning to you Ms Dugdale.  Some people are saying who would want a job like that, why are you seeking it?  

KEZIA DUGDALE: Good morning.  Well I think it’s time for a new generation of people to step up and lead the Scottish Labour party.  I believe that Labour values are as relevant now as they have ever been before and I’m putting my name forward to lead a party which is first and foremost about people, about the untapped potential of every single Scot, of every family in every community.  We have finally focused on the future, on the big challenges ahead and how to realise those and I am going to put education at the heart of my platform.  After eight years here in Scotland of an SNP government the gap between the wealthiest kids and the poorest kids performance at school is just as wide as its ever been and that’s a scandal.  We have full powers here in Scotland over education and it’s time that we used them.  

DM: But to be fair, those were arguments that Mr Murphy when he led the party and others were making in the course of the general election and they didn’t wash then with the Scottish electorate, why will they wash now?

KEZIA DUGDALE: We had a whole raft of policies throughout the general election campaign but what we didn’t really say was what the Labour party was for, we didn’t put forward a positive enough vision about the future and I think that’s what people here in Scotland are looking for.  They don’t want to know just about the problems that we have here in Scotland, they want to know how we’re going to fix it and how we are going to make our country better so I am going to be putting forward a positive vision for that, first and foremost about people and the value of education and the ability that we have to realise that potential.  Yes, it was a bad election result, it was a terrible election result and the news can still get worse.  There was a poll here in Scotland just two weeks ago that showed just 5% of people my age in the 25-34 year old age bracket intend to vote Labour in the Scottish parliament elections next year, 80% of that age group are intending on voting SNP.  I am under no illusion as to the size of the challenge that I’m prepared to take on but I am prepared to take it on because I believe that Labour values are as relevant now as they have ever been before. I  believe that I’m the person to be able to speak to that generation and talk about their hopes and ambitions for the future.  

DM: Well let’s just talk about, you are drawing a lot of experience from what has happened in the past, you talk about a more positive message, do you think that Jim Murphy wasn’t positive enough, that he got some of that messaging wrong or wasn’t it the fact that whatever happened to your party was going to happen whoever led the party?

KEZIA DUGDALE: I was Jim Murphy’s deputy and I was proud to be his deputy and I take my responsibility for the share of the blame and the defeat that we’ve just had here in Scotland but I also understand that what we need to do now is to focus on the future.  That’s what it’s all about, looking back to our past and all the black and white moments of our great history, delivering social change, the NHS, national minimum wage, this building behind me, the Scottish Parliament itself – great achievements of the Labour party but people want to know what the Labour party is going to do next, they want to know who we are and what we stand for and under my leadership there will be no doubt what that is about and that is about putting people first and foremost, in sharp contrast to the SNP who will always be about the nation first and foremost.
DM: And that’s the point isn’t it, you know better than I much discussion about another referendum in the not too distant future and on that national question, you presumably again would be campaigning for a no vote and campaigning not necessarily alongside but the same message yet again as the Conservative party, indeed as UKIP and others and that’s what’s done you so much damage in Scotland and  you can’t change that.  

KEZIA DUGDALE: There is no doubt that campaigning side by side with the Tories during the referendum was damaging for the Scottish Labour party but I voted no in that referendum and I believe that that was the right thing to do for Scotland.  That was a view shared by two million other Scots.  85% of people in Scotland went out and voted in that referendum and they voted no, we won that campaign but that’s passed now.  The SNP told us and the Yes campaign told us that the referendum for Scottish independence was a once in a lifetime, a once in a generation opportunity.  It’s now in the past.  This building behind me has tremendous powers, it’s about to get a lot more powers too and we need to put those powers to work.  We are serious about a more equal society, a fairer society and we have to put those powers to work and that’s what I’m going to be talking about in the weeks and months ahead.

DM: Are those powers you are talking about which are heading the way of the Scottish parliament, are they enough for you or do you think they should be pushed further towards full fiscal autonomy?   

KEZIA DUGDALE: What we’ll see in the Scotland Bill is the Vow delivered, this is the famous Vow that was on the front page of the Daily Record that talked about more powers for the Scottish parliament, that maintaining the Barnett Formula, that is incredibly important here to our public services in Scotland.  The ideas that the SNP are pushing just now around full fiscal autonomy means the abolition of the Barnett Formula, scrapping it and what that would do is mean £7.6 billion worth of additional cuts, that’s cuts on top of Tory austerity here in Scotland.  Our schools and our hospitals, our public services, our pensions can’t afford that here in Scotland so I don’t support the SNPs plans for full fiscal autonomy.  Why?  Because it will be a bad deal for Scotland, bad deal for families and bad deal for public services.  

DM: So that’s part of the platform you are taking into the Scottish parliamentary elections next year.  Just to pick up on something you alluded to a bit earlier there, that things might get even worse for the Labour party.  Do you think they are going to get worse before they get better?

KEZIA DUGDALE: Well our problems didn’t happen overnight and they won’t be fixed overnight either so when I put my name forward for the leadership of my party I asked my colleagues to back me for the short, the medium and the long term and I am pleased to say that three quarters of the elected Members of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the European Parliament and our one remaining MP did exactly that.  They understand that this is a long term problem and that we need to fix it in a whole manner of ways.  There is a huge amount of change that we need to do within the Scottish Labour party and in terms of speaking to the country ahead so I said yesterday in my campaign launch that it is possible that there is another storm coming for the Scottish Labour party and we need to understand the force of that but that doesn’t mean in any way that I have given up on next year’s election, that I won’t put forward a positive case for Labour values and ambitious plans to change our country, to make it the fairer more prosperous place that it can be for the vast majority of Scots.  To do that we have to put people first, put people first and foremost.   

DM: Sure but if you do become leader do you think you could help dodge that storm? You say another storm could be on the way, it must help, do you feel it helps that you are not a member of the Westminster parliament?

KEZIA DUGDALE: I’m not sure that that’s the big issue at the heart of this leadership election.  It’s about who best represents the platform, the ability to change the Labour party, to make sure it stands up for the issues and the challenges that we face in the future.  I have got a tremendous amount of support from my colleagues here in the Scottish parliament to do that but there is no doubt that whilst the Labour party here in Scotland was the party of devolution, that delivered this building I’m standing in front of, we failed to adapt to the realities of devolution.  The electorate have just done it for us though in returning just one Labour MP, they have forced the Labour party in Scotland to realise that  the Scottish parliament needs to front and centre of our politics. I believe that, I understand that that’s where the Scottish Labour party needs to be and that is what I will talk about in the weeks and months ahead.

DM: Okay, so you have got your leadership campaign going and of course there’s a leadership campaign going for the overall Labour party, do you have a view as to who best represents what you agree with and will help your task in Scotland should you be elected leader there?

KEZIA DUGDALE: Well I haven’t decided which of the four UK wide leadership candidates to vote for yet.  I’ve met three of them, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall have all been here to the Scottish Parliament and I have met with them individually and I have been very challenging with them.  They need to understand the particular set of circumstances here in Scotland, just how bad the defeat was for Labour here in Scotland and to hear what ideas they have to turn that around.  Now I want to see a more autonomous Scottish Labour party, I want all our policy to be decided here in Scotland, I’d like the structures of the Labour party to reflect that and I’d like the UK leaders to accept that reality as well and I’ll vote for the UK leadership contender that best understands and represents the issues that we face here in Scotland.  

DM: So formal autonomy, I mean the easiest way of ensuring that is to have an independent Scottish Labour party isn’t it?

KEZIA DUGDALE: No, I don’t support an independent Labour party.  We’ve just won a referendum on the principles of pooling and sharing resources across the whole of the United Kingdom, if that’s good enough for the UK it’s good enough for the Labour party in my view.  That doesn’t mean that we can’t be more autonomous though, that we can’t make our own policy here in Scotland and I’ve done that already.  Just a few weekends ago I said I believe that European Union nationals should get a vote in the European Union referendum that’s coming up shortly, I’m very proud to represent this great capital city of Edinburgh.  There are around 30,000 Spanish residents here and I would like to see them get a vote in that referendum, they pay their taxes, they choose to live their life here, they should get to vote in that European Union referendum.  I can say that here in Scotland as a Labour Member of Parliament and hopefully the next leader of the Scottish Labour party, there is no problem with that whatsoever.

DM: All right, we shall see.  Ms Dugdale, great talking to you.  Kezia Dugdale there, live for us from the Scottish capital.