The debate within Scottish Labour about whether the party should consider having a free vote in any future independence referendum rumbles on.
Former Labour first minister Henry McLeish told BBC Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme on Monday morning that he thinks it would be “remarkable” if Labour politicians were to be allowed to vote however they wished on independence. He added that a free vote for Labour MSPs would have “huge implications on the very idea of Scotland staying within the union”.
If the party is saying, look we need a bigger debate within the party, that’s fine. But if for example you allow MPs, MSPs, MEPs and councillors to vote whatever way they want, what is the message we’re telling the public? I think that we have to be quite clear that a debate in the party is not the same as saying to the country you can vote however you wish.”
McLeish , who was first minister of Scotland from 2000 to 2001, also denied that he had “flirted” with support for independence, amidst unshakeable rumours that he was on the brink of declaring himself a yes voter by the end of the campaign .
The new Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale had suggested on Sunday that Labour MSPs could be free to campaign for independence, while insisting that “I cannot accept that there will automatically and inevitably be another referendum on independence”.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Politics Scotland, Dugdale said:
Almost 30% of Labour supporters voted yes and I respect that. I’m not going to shut down my party’s renewal and debate in my party because people hold a different position on independence.”
Asked whether Labour MSPs should be free to campaign for independence if they were convinced by those arguments, she responded: “I think absolutely if somebody holds that view on the question of independence I’m not going to try and shut down the debate.”
Since her election in August, Dugdale has been working hard to draw focus away from the constitutional question and onto the Scottish government’s record, particularly in relation to children, poverty and education. But the anniversary of last year’s vote has inevitably raised the question again, while critical friends within Scottish Labour believe that the party still has a lot to learn from the referendum experience and its effect on May’s general election.
Dugdale added that she had “tremendous respect” for Johann Lamont’s suggestion, in an interview broadcast on Good Morning Scotland earlier on Sunday, that Scottish Labour should consider having a free vote on any future independence referendum.
She also talked approvingly of former Labour MP Gemma Doyle proposal put forward over the summer that Labour’s position should be debated at party conference.
In a blog for Progress, Doyle wrote:
To stop rows about what role the Scottish Labour party should play in a second referendum the new leader should think hard about putting this question to the membership. I have no doubt that the vast majority of our members want us to campaign against independence, but in a much weaker party, debating this question for the second time round, it will be important to have a settled view, which members feel has been considered carefully and taken democratically.”
