Jackie Baillie on abuse of women and where Labour can win

The Herald Scotland

2 days ago

All the more curious then why she pointedly refused to support her party colleague, Joanna Cherry, after she'd received death threats and messages threatening sexual violence from a former SNP member over her sex-realist views.
The former first minister was also silent when numerous female SNP politicians were subject to harassment and intimidation by male party activists for defending women's single-sex spaces.
Jackie Baillie is no stranger to this treatment either. Scottish Labour's Deputy Leader is telling me about the selection of candidates for next year's Holyrood elections.
There are fewer women than men coming forward and so the party has twinning arrangements in place to ensure parity.
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I tell her this isn't surprising, given the abuse and defamation of high-profile - mainly SNP-women from within their own party. She discusses the abuse that's been directed at her.
'Social media is quite shocking in its treatment of women,' she says.
'A lot of us have social media comments directed at us that come from a sewer.
'They comment on how you dress, your size and ask if you've got shares in Greggs. But they're just keyboard warriors who would never say it to your face.
'It'll take an effort by all parties to remove this, and I know some of our people do it to SNP people. We need civility in politics. You can disagree – and passionately – but you don't need to abuse people.
'You can grow a hard skin and ignore it as best you can, but I think it's about women encouraging other women. It's about giving them confidence and support.
'The Scottish Labour Women's Committee has been hosting events for women to come along and have a chat if they're thinking about standing.'
Ms Baillie has already interviewed more than 100 prospective MSP candidates and says that the party has never previously been as exhaustive in its selection process.
'We're always thinking too about who we would want in the cabinet, if we gained power. They should have some expertise in their chosen policy area.
"Sam Galbraith once suggested to me that cabinet secretaries ideally would have run a large organisation and not be scared of instructing the civil servants on how they want things done.'
Ah yes: the civil service. A drone-class of dull-eyed automatons have emerged at the top of the Scottish government in the Sturgeon/Swinney era.
They're easily picked off by better-educated civil servants who find it easy to impose their own luxury beliefs on them. The contagion has spread to Labour, while the Scottish Greens are little more than a flash mob of itinerant, middle-class flag-warriors.
They turn up at the right meetings and get to carry a minister's Costa coffee: posh kids who want a short-cut to parliament without doing the hard graft.
'Your lot has them too, Jackie,' I tell her. 'So, how will you sort that out?'
She's alive, at least, to the curse of the civil service as activists. She recalls a third-sector organisation's wretched experience of running into the Scottish civil service.
'They told me they had behaved like activists and that it had become clear they were trying to impose these beliefs on them before they could get anywhere near a minister.
'I watched the development of the National Care Service Bill, a process that involved 200 civil servants. What emerged just did not make any sense. This is why we need a Delivery Unit with partnerships on the ground at local level. People expect more from their government and want to see speedier delivery.'
In the light of The Herald's revelations last week about the targeting of gender-realist women inside the UK's and Scotland's main civil service union, the PCS, you can see a potential area for improvement.
'We want to know how passionate prospective candidates are about their own communities. Look at Davy Russell [the recently-elected MSP for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse].
'I've spent 25 years getting to a point where if I walk down Dumbarton Main Street people will recognise me and say hello. Davy Russell had that from day one. He's a real local, born and brought up there. He knows everyone and they trust him because of that.
'The quality and calibre of prospective candidates I'm seeing is very high. We're getting people who are teachers, social workers, lawyers and at least one NHS consultant. These are people who can be our eyes and ears inside organisations that need to change.'
She talks about Sam Galbraith again, the much-admired NHS consultant.
"Sam was brilliant as health minister at the Scotland Office,' she says. 'Yet, the civil servants talked Donald Dewar out of putting him in Health in the Scottish Parliament and so he went to education.
"That was a mistake. He knew more about Health than the civil servants, and I think they feared that.
'I always say to young people who come into my office: 'go and get a life first. Go out and experience life. Get a profession, do whatever you're going to do; then come and see me. I was 36 when I started in parliament.
"I had a seven-year-old daughter. That was a hard juggling act. But it's life experience and it's better for your constituents. We want them to be more knowledgeable; to have done different things; to have interesting skill-sets. If we're fortunate enough to be the government next May, we want to have people who can hit the ground running.
'We'll also have a delivery unit. One of my major criticisms of the SNP is that they have loads of statutory documents, but they line the shelves of St Andrew's House and never get implemented.'
I hear what she's saying and it all sounds tickety, but it'll help if you don't have – you know – too much socialism in your blood.
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She describes this as 'complete nonsense' and says: 'Just look at the range of great candidates that have been selected to stand – people like Carol Mochan and Katy Clark – neither of whom could be considered right-wing.'
This time last year, Labour might have been considered slight favourites to take Holyrood next year.
But after Keir Starmer's first six months in power, not only the wheels came off, but the road disappeared in front of them.
Consequently, Scottish Labour's hopes of power began disappearing faster than the OAPs' winter fuel payments.
Jackie Baillie believes though, that Davy Russell's by-election victory is evidence that Scottish Labour are recovering the situation.
'Before that by-election, we were at a lower position in the polls than we are now. We knitted together a coalition of people who felt let down by the SNP and who remain horrified by the Tories.
'Former SNP voters were telling us of their disillusion that this was as good as it gets under the SNP.
'If we had a poll tomorrow, the undecideds would win.
'We've been doing some very careful polling and we're finding that people who aren't yet saying they've voting Labour are not gone back to the SNP. They're undecideds and are back in play. And there are a lot of them.'
I tell her that Labour need to understand why a large cohort of traditional Labour voters are backing Reform. And that the extent to which Labour and the SNP acknowledge this may have a significant bearing on next year's election.
Thus far, the SNP's response is to dismiss working-class people who back Reform as ignorant bigots. If Labour do the same then they're doomed.
The political classes have driven voters into Nigel Farage's arms because they don't like to be falsely accused of being racists and transphobes by a class of people who couldn't find their neighbourhoods with a satnav.
'I'm careful about the Reform factor in Scotland,' she says. 'But I don't think it's as great as people are saying.
'But yes, we need to be in these communities and to be listening to their concerns in a way that the SNP aren't. This is where we can win.'