Hamish Macdonell

Kezia Dugdale appeals to the Left with personal speech about her past

Jeremy Corbyn really has made socialism trendy – at least in Scotland. We can take that from the speech that Kezia Dugdale, Labour’s Scottish leader, will make a today focusing on the ‘s’ word – something she is unlikely to have done had Mr Corbyn been languishing in the polls.

Indeed, it was only a few weeks ago that Dugdale warned that a Corbyn victory would leave Labour ‘carping on the sidelines’. Then, as he started to edge ahead in the race, she started to move, first insisting they shared some similar policies and then meeting him privately at a rally in Edinburgh.

Today she will edge even closer to his agenda by getting really passionate about inequality and poverty.

‘My socialism wasn’t learned from a book, it comes from lived experience. Who I am has shaped what I believe,’ she will tell an audience in Edinburgh.
Dugdale will cast her politics as a direct result of her upbringing, a childhood where she recognised inequality around her and then decided to do something about it.

She will say: ‘I first felt the unfairness of inequality when I moved from primary school in leafy Elgin to secondary school in urban Dundee. Expansive sports fields replaced by playground concrete. An average pupil in prosperous Elgin, I was suddenly near top of the class in my new secondary in Dundee.’

Her message is deliberately crafted to put her on the side of those who seek to balance up society, in any way they can.

It has clear echoes of Mr Corbyn’s tax-the-rich agenda and this speech will probably represent the most markedly socialist statement by a Scottish Labour leader for years.

For Dugdale, the inequalities were worse at university where she came into contact with privately-educated children for the first time.

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