The Man at the End of the Road

Davy Russell is the Scottish Labour candidate in the Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse Holyrood by-election. And he can’t even look like he’s holding it together when trying to answer the most obvious questions about Starmer’s government, questions which he should have been rehearsing for months. Davy Russell should have been anticipating these questions long before he ever met STV’s Colin McKay.

Back in the 1980s, when I was a young lobbyist in Westminster, there were lots of Labour MPs like this. Decent, honest working-class men from Central Scotland, South Wales or the North of England, with decades of hard work behind them, and long service in the Labour movement, but without the articulacy and quick-thinking needed to be an effective parliamentarian. I learnt, often painfully, not to push them to the foreground.

Around the world, there have always been plenty of people in the labour movement with huge talents as leaders and spokespeople, as orators and debaters. But in much of Britain, the movement ossified, promoting people as a reward for loyalty and conformity and long service, rather than putting the best talent in the key posts, and giving youthful energy it’s chance to soar.

Davy Russell is almost a template for that sort of candidate chosen as a long-service award. But the days are long gone when Labour in Central Scotland could weigh the votes for any candidate with a red rosette.

The Davy Russell retro-Labour act isn’t just out of time; it’s out of road. Poor Davy’s chances of winning the seat back from the SNP were always slim, but this time his party is about to be pushed to the margins of Scottish politics. The decline feels terminal.

The death of the UK Labour Party has been long foretold, its failings and woes endlessly analysed. It’s kinda the luck of the draw that Davy Russell is the standard-bearer at another point of inflection, because there are many men like Davy Russell who could have worn the same shoes.

My reactions are jumbled and conflicted. I rage at the failure of this candidate selection and at the ossified political culture that produced it. I feel a desperate urge to protect Davy as he struggles with a situation not of his making and in which he is out of his depth. I feel contempt for the reactionary conspirators who have hijacked UK Labour and flown the hostages to some dismal dusty airport on the remote far right.

And above all, I feel bereaved that the labour movement has crumbled into this shambolic shitshow. The organised working class had the power to create a better world using strikes and votes and solidarity rather than guns and battles. There was hope and there was vision and there was real progress.

In Britain, there was a 31 year period of the Welfare State, where some of that vision was fulfilled. Since then, there has been 49 years of dismantling it, as the cultivated nightmare of neoliberalism turns back the clock on basic human needs like secure housing, stable employment, and a robust system of social security.

And now a decent man is being publicly humiliated because he’s not slick enough to smoothly evade defending the indefensible #Starmtroopers, while Farage private jets into Scotlandshire like a poundshop Fortinbras.

It didn’t have to be like this.