Andrew Berry, a trade unionist from London and Labour member, recently attended a Scottish Labour leadership hustings, and I recommend his review. Here are some unedited highlights.On Iain Gray and Andy Kerr: "The two men spoke first and frankly it was vacuous nonsense focused on what positions they held and bash the nationalist no mention of policy, Kerr if anything was to the right of Gray who is apparently Browns favoured candidate."
Cathy Jamieson: "talked about working with trade unions and for the party to be involved in making policy, whilst much of this was vague it was considerably more political and to the left of the other two."
She won his support, but it was hardly wholehearted: "I came out of the husting believing that was I in Scotland I would have little choice but to vote for Cathy Jamison despite the history of privatising the prison service and her dreadful appearance on question time were she seemed to support DNA collection of all UK citizens from birth."
He thought Bill Butler was clearly the best candidate for deputy, but: "didn't entirely agree with every thing he said such as his view that PFI should compete on a level playing field with other public sector financing, why it needs to be in the field at all I don't know."
Does anyone know why anyone with views like this, so antithetical to the modern Labour Party, would continue to support the party of PFI, war, privatisation, ID cards, and the rest? It's a mystery to me.
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