Douglas Alexander is back!

Douglas Alexander is back as Secretary of State for Scotland.

The last time he was back was in 2023 when The Times and the Scotsman went to town on the Labour revival New Labour New Scotland New Britain with Labour grandees of the past floating above the Edinburgh cityscape, somehow evoking a vision of the future.

Now they’re all back again, but Douglas Alexander is back the most.

It was late in the day when it was announced that Alexander would be staying in post, and he issued a characteristically formal post.

The rumours were that in all of the jockeying for position, Alexander coveted the Foreign Secretary position. But that had to go to Ed Miliband for losing out to John Healey as Chancellor (defence stocks have risen with this appointment). So Douglas stays put.

It was a non-change that was lobbied hard by his friends and colleagues in the media. None-harder than Chris Deerin in The New Statesman who wrote a remarkable fawning piece in which he urges Andy Burnham to keep him in post and talks of Alexander’s “unusually supple brain”. Shades of when pundits used to talk of Wendy Alexander’s ‘gigantic intellect’.

Deerin starts with an admission:

“…it’s worth admitting that Alexander is not universally popular among his Scottish colleagues. His critics accuse him of being arrogant and overly brusque at times, especially to underlings. He is blamed by some for Scottish Labour’s dreadful performance in the recent Holyrood election, a campaign of which he was a key architect.”

Awkward.

An Unusually Supple Brain

But such niceties are quickly brushed over as Deerin gets into his stride:

” I should say that in my dealings with him I have found the latter-day Alexander – since his return to parliament in 2024 – to be charming, thoughtful, honest, self-deprecating and genuinely engaging. You rarely finish a conversation with him without coming away with a clever insight or a fresh line of thinking. He has an unusually supple brain, which is of course now complemented by great experience inside and outside politics. He is a grown-up and a team player in a modern climate that is too often infantile and self-interested.”

This is fanboy stuff.

But also Deerin seems really confused. He says: “Doing the same thing over and over again simply hasn’t worked, and so some bright ideas are needed.” And the bright new idea is to do the same thing over and over again…

“In the aftermath of that result, the fifth straight thumping at the hands of the Nats, there is a lot of thinking to be done. There are suggestions from some that Scottish Labour should formally separate from the Westminster party, emphasising that it is wholly focused on issues north of the border and freeing itself to more convincingly compete with the SNP when it comes to “standing up for Scotland”. That unshiftable 30-35 per cent of the electorate that seems willing to back the SNP come what may certainly indicates that identity politics remains a powerful, and for some, dominant driver of choice. How can a social democratic, unionist party operate in such an environment? If the SNP seems unable to lose, how can Labour win? How can it be “more Scottish” without losing the values such as solidarity and internationalism that have long been at its core?”

Who remembers witnessing Scottish Labour’s values of ‘solidarity and internationalism’ on display?

Deerin seems to celebrate Alexander’s ability to put the knife in, arguing: “He has the ability to square circles in a convincing and ostensibly reasonable style, which is a significant frontline skill. He is a very good politician – his handling of Starmer’s downfall, where he mixed public loyalty with a frank critique of where the government had gone wrong, put many of his colleagues to shame.”

Place Based Politics

As this gushing homage unfolds, there’s a couple of revelations among the hot-air. Deerin writes:

“Given the incoming prime minister’s desire for a “place-based” politics, for a new era of hyper-devolution, the Scottish Secretary has useful experience and form. He has already overseen the UK’s Pride in Place programme, which will see up to £280m shared among 14 of Scotland’s most deprived communities to reclaim derelict land, strengthen locally owned facilities and address inequalities.”

That’s £280m divided up by fourteen communities. That’s £20m over a decade. That’s £2m a year.

Finally, Deerin finishes by saying; “Burnham has said he wants to see greater and more direct involvement by his administration in the devolved nations, which is something Alexander has championed since taking office. It should be entirely possible to do this in partnership with the Scottish government, to everyone’s benefit, if grown-ups can behave like grown-ups.”

Ah, ‘grown-ups’. This is code for direct rule bypassing the elected government at Holyrood. This is why Alexander speaks of being a “lifelong devolutionist” in his announcement and why his pals in the media ignore his shambolic election campaign “of which he was a key architect.”

As you were, the people have spoken, well, not really, but it’s time for place-based politics and letting Alexander’s Unusually Supple Brain shine. Onwards.