RICHARD Leonard quit as Scottish Labour leader after Sir Keir Starmer told senior party colleagues and potential donors he had no confidence in his leadership, it has emerged.
According to reports Leonard’s sudden resignation followed a meeting the previous evening at which Starmer made clear his views.
The Zoom conference call on Wednesday night involved Leonard’s deputy Jackie Baillie, as well as potential donors, who are understood to have said they would not back Labour while Leonard stayed in his post.
Relations dipped to a new low when Leonard, 58, issued a statement that appeared to undermine Starmer’s decision to vote for Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal earlier this month.
It emerged that trade unions including the GMB helped broker talks and acted as guarantors for Leonard, a former GMB organiser said.
READ MORE: Did Richard Leonard’s defiance of Keir Starmer on Brexit lead to his demise?
The GMB is a major Labour donor that represents workers in the manufacturing industry and public services.
According to the Times’, Baillie, Ian Murray MP, the shadow Scottish secretary, David Evans, the UK general secretary, Angela Rayner, the UK deputy leader, William Haughey, the businessman, and Robert Latham, the human rights lawyer, were on the Zoom call and Leonard was not.
Leonard’s sudden resignation – just four months after he survived an attempted coup by a group of his MSPs – plunged the party into crisis ahead of the Holyrood election, due in May.
The party will now have to search for its 10th leader since 1999 and fifth since 2014.
A Scottish Labour Procedures’ Committee, to oversee the election of Leonard’s successor, has been formed and had its first meeting yesterday.
Labour’s Scottish Executive Committee will also meet in coming days to agree a timetable for the process.
Meanwhile, in an interview yesterday John Swinney said the party’s problems are not down to who they have as leader, but to its opposition to independence and a second independence referendum.
The Deputy First Minister argued Scottish Labour’s stances on both had “alienated” supporters on the “moderate left of centre” and that this situation would continue with the party having to continually look for new leaders until it had resolved the “fundamental” matter.
“I’m sorry for Richard Leonard. Richard is a very decent man and I’ve always had very decent and purposeful dealings with him and it’s tough when you have to leave political leadership. But he’s had an impossible job.
“His party is fundamentally unhappy and divided and at odds with the people most likely to support them,” Swinney told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland earlier today.
“Because Labour’s problem is not who their leader is, their problem is their politics.
“Most moderate left of centre voters want us to have independence or at least a referendum on independence, and Labour has alienated all these people by their stances and until they resolve that issue, it will just be another leader, after another leader, after another leader as it has been for the last 11 years.”
In a statement on Thursday, Leonard said he “thought long and hard over the Christmas period” and speculation about his leadership had “become a distraction”.
Starmer is said to have grown frustrated with Labour’s failure to gain ground in Scotland and had lost confidence in Leonard amid plunging poll ratings.
READ MORE: John Swinney: Labour woes due to independence views, not who is leader
In 2019, Scottish Labour lost both of its MEPs in European elections and six of its seven MPs in the general election.
In a statement, Starmer said: “Richard has led Scottish Labour through one of the most challenging and difficult periods in our country’s history, including a general election and the pandemic. Even from opposition he has achieved a considerable amount.”
According to a poll, published on Thursday, the SNP is on course for a majority as Sturgeon’s coronavirus response attracts both former Tory and Labour supporters.
The First Minister has impressed “significant chunks” of voters, according to the Savanta ComRes poll for The Scotsman.
The survey between January 8 and 13 found 37% of Labour’s 2019 voters, and 13% of Scottish Tory voters, were more likely to back the SNP at the next election than they had been before the pandemic. Some 59% Scots have a more positive view of Sturgeon than before the pandemic, including 46% of Scottish Labour voters and 36% of Scottish Tory supporters.
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