IT started as you’d expect.
A spattering of Scottish Labour MSPs, MPs, activists and members milling about, chatting and waiting for the main event: a Glasgow hustings for the three who would be Anas Sarwar’s successor.
Leaflets were distributed for two of the leadership candidates throwing their hats into the ring – Joe Fagan and Monica Lennon.
Michael Marra – seen as the frontrunner by many – didn’t bother, from what I could see.
When all three eventually made their way to the stage, it was met by claps. But not the rapturous, excited kind.
After all, Scottish Labour have just had their worst-ever Holyrood results in May – turning just 17 MSPs.
First, the three candidates made their opening speeches.
Michael Marra, up first, was polished if not entirely inspiring. He asked those in attendance: “How many times are we going to do this? How many times are we going to meet after losing another election to the SNP?”
Meanwhile, just outside, pro-Palestine protesters were shouting at the top of their lungs and waving flags visible from inside the venue.
Marra also hit out at the “cowardly briefing” that rocked his campaign last weekend, referring to a report in The Herald, who spoke with a source accusing him of proposing to sack Labour staff at Holyrood.
Lennon, who is struggling to make the ballot, repeated her claim that Scottish Labour are facing their “worst-ever crisis”.
She went further, adding that the party is in a “coma” and must “stop sleepwalking into electoral oblivion”.
Fagan, who was elected as an MSP for the first time just 3 months ago, was less damning of the place Scottish Labour find themselves in.
He instead spoke of the “change” the party needs and flagged his experience as the former leader of South Lanarkshire Council.
Then came questions from members, which took the candidates onto topics ranging from North Sea oil and gas, austerity, local government and devolution, building more council homes and – albeit very briefly and with answers that totally dodged the question – Scottish independence.
There were some points of difference policy-wise between the candidates.
For example, Marra and Fagan backed more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea and metro mayors in Scotland, while Lennon talked about Scotland’s “climate obligations” and brought up concerns that more politicians might not be the answer.
But not many.
When the NHS was eventually brought up, Marra rehashed some of the party’s Holyrood manifesto – which he wrote. Fagan then praised the document.
“We had good ideas, we had good ideas to put forward for that election,” he said to nods from both.
Lennon brought up her recent experience in hospital, using much of the rest of her answer to the importance of reforming Scotland’s care sector – praising the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s recent pledge to build a unified National Care Service in England.
She hit out at the SNP, who made a similar pledge in 2021, but are yet to deliver it.
They all then made their impassioned final pitches to claps from around the room.
But for all the chat of the need for “change” and the dire situation the party finds itself in, you’d be hard-pressed to find much evidence of it in the room.
There was little sense of a party actually wrestling with what went wrong in May, or that it has lost more than half its members in eight years.
Or, quite simply, of a leadership contest willing to test new ideas on how to turn things around.
