RICHARD Leonard could be ousted as Scottish Labour leader by a vote of no confidence later this week, reports have suggested.
The party’s ruling Scottish executive are meeting on Saturday and senior members are said to be considering a confidence motion.
The possible development, reported by the Sunday Times, comes as Leonard yesterday underlined that his party will be opposing a second independence referendum in its Holyrood election campaign.
The embattled Scottish Labour leader said it did not believe that “the best interests of the people of Scotland were served to set up a separate Scottish state”.
He told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge yesterday: “We have said that going into the elections next year because of the scale of the crisis ... the priority for the next Scottish Parliament and next Scottish Government should not be around constitutional questions, it needs to be about solving those social and economic questions, that is why I have said we will go into those questions next year opposed to a second independence referendum.”
Leonard went on to say his party wanted reform and modernisation of the UK state, more decentralisation and “greater parity of esteem” among the different nations.
Pressed on whether his party would continue to oppose a second independence referendum if the SNP win a majority in May, he said: “Eight months out from an election I am not concede the result to the SNP.”
Last week the Scottish Labour leader faced calls by four Labour MSPs and a number of peers to stand down in the wake of poor polling results, one which put his party on course to win just 14% of the vote at the
May election.
Asked if he was going to step down, Leonard said he was not, adding he had been given a mandate by party members to be the leader going into the 2021 Holyrood elections.
When asked by Ridge about the 14% polling figure for the party, he said it was part of a long term trend.
Leonard’s interview comes a day after his predecessor as Scottish Labour leader said there will “unquestionably be a second independence referendum” if the SNP win a majority at the Scottish Parliament elections in May.
Kezia Dugdale said there has been a “considerable shift” from No to Yes in polls in the past few months.
Speaking at an event in her role as the director of the John Smith Centre for Politics and Public Service, she said: “The SNP are miles ahead in the polls, a good 20% point lead on the Conservatives, who are in second place.
“They are very likely to have a majority in a parliament which is not designed to produce majorities and a by-product of that will be that there will unquestionably be a second independence referendum.
“If you look at current independence referendum polling there has been a considerable shift from No to Yes, around five or six percentage points in the last six months, really.
“And when you dig into who those people are, they tend to be people who voted No last time, that are under the age of 40, that consider themselves to be centre-left when it comes to social policy, but want to own their own home, value their pension, want a nice holiday and a car in their driveway.
“And all the arguments around economic security that made them vote No last time have been quashed by Brexit, because they are all predominately remain voters who feel very aggrieved by Brexit.”
Last week Labour’s Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford said no government or party should stand in the way of an independence referendum if that is what voters want.
“It is for the people of Wales and the people of Scotland to make that decision,” he said.
“No Labour leader should argue that the component parts of the United Kingdom can be prevented from navigating a future for themselves.”
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