I suspect that the Scottish Labour gala dinner in Glasgow tonight won’t feel like much of a gala. The Scottish Labour party is in crisis: its leader has quit attacking the UK Labour party for treating it like a ‘branch office’ and now an Ipsos-Mori Westminster voting intention poll has the SNP on 52 per cent to Labour’s 23 per cent.
This poll is a reminder of the scale of the challenge facing whoever is the new leader of the Scottish Labour party. I argue in the magazine this week that Jim Murphy is, by a distance, the best candidate for the job. He has what Scottish Labour so desperately needs right now: energy, no fear of the SNP and its agenda and the ability to win elections.
But Murphy’s victory is, by no means, a done deal. Much of the Labour left, including the powerful union Unite loathe him.
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