The Man at the End of the Road
Almost inarticulate. Painful to watch.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It didn’t have to be like this. 

— BELLA CALEDONIA (@bellacaledonia) June 3, 2025
Surely it’s a mistake to equate the Labour Party with the Labour movement? The latter is much broader than the party. Trade unions, the cooperative movement, civil society/ internationalist organisations. There are signs that new formations are emerging let’s watch for signs of renewal.
Good point, Cathie. I hope I don’t equate the party with movement, tho my phrasing may not be ideal.
But the party and the trade unions have historically been the movement’s two primary centres of power. Both are in trouble: the party a burnt-out hulk with a hostile captain, and the unions disempowered.
The cooperative movement in Britain is huge trouble, having shrunk massively and lost its bank and its farms. Its retail stores are now all local convenience stores, having given the mass market to the supermarkets . Assets built over generations have been frittered away.
Yes, there are green shoots, and of course they are wonderful. But these saplings are sprouting where the movement once had mighty forests.
…. that was brutal !! …. painful to watch & listen to …. his replies (in so far as one could regard them as such) were incoherent, unintelligible and shambolic ….. if that’s the caliber of Labour’s (Scottish Branch Office) Candidates, then they are finished.
Sadly, it was not ‘unintelligible’. We could see his naivete in dealing with an assertive interviewer, who was raising valid points.
Every Scottish Labour MSP, MP and prospective candidate would have been unable to give an honest answer, because the Labour Government does not have a robust coherent narrative for what it’s vision is and how it is attempting to govern. It is English nationalist and authoritarian in its practice.
The Prime Minister and his cabinet are, with few exceptions good public speakers and few speak with any sense of mission. They parrot vacuous cliches which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The General Election slogan, ‘Change’ could mean a wide range of things.
Liz Truss made a ‘change’, as did Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, David Cameron, and, most of all, George Osborne.
Indeed, Osborne made transformative changes which impoverished millions of people and hugely enriched a small section of already wealthy people. The unlikeable Rachel Reeves appears to have accepted Osborne’s economic paradigm and has explicitly rejected the kind of redistributive taxes that can reverse Osborne’s malign actions.
So, the hapless Mr Russel is to be pitied. The people of the constituency are to be spared his ineptitude.
Apologies: my fat fingers and autocorrect proved ‘good public speakers’ when I intended ‘poor …..’
What an insult from the Labour Party to the people of the constituency. It shows their ongoing contempt of Scottish voters. I hope the constituents will see the antics of Starmer, Reeves and Farage as well as the hapless Davy as signs that will lead them to vote for the SNP which is certainly not perfect but at least holds on to the principles that the Labour Party used to believe in and which wide boy Farage hasn’t a scooby about.
‘Great piece!
Thanks, Graeme
Colin McKay is coming on far too strong here. He looks like a wanker.
What happened t the rest of his shirt collar by the way?