Report to the People
20th August 2007
Elective Surgery
It is said
that, when a politician dies, his famously unsentimental colleagues comment,
“Poor chap. Who’s replacing
him?”. And something similar
happens when a politician resigns - only they don’t bother with the “poor
chap” bit.
I would not,
though, want Jack McConnell to be consigned to the history books without
remembering that he was certainly a friend of Inverclyde.
He was the one, you’ll recall, who heeded my calls to make the
regeneration of our economy the Executive’s top priority.
He recognised the potential of this community and put the government’s
full weight behind realising it.
A change of
leader, though, while inevitable and necessary, will not in itself magically
revive Labour’s fortunes.
We need to
face up to why we lost. Why did
hardworking families across Scotland feel that the SNP, a party more identified
with support for independence than public services, represented their interests
better than us? It is simply not
acceptable that these people no longer felt we spoke for them.
While some
blame can be laid at the door of our flawed national campaign, we’re kidding
ourselves if we think we lost the election during those four weeks in April.
It was lost during the previous four years; after the antisocial
behaviour act and the smoking ban, the Executive seemed to lose direction.
We must
listen to the message we have been given. And
we need a leader with both a coherent vision of where Scotland should be and the
ability to take us there.
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