Scottish Labour leadership frontrunner urged to apologise for ‘boring’ Holyrood manifesto

Scottish Labour leadership frontrunner Michael Marra has been urged to apologise for the “boring and dull” Holyrood manifesto he helped mastermind.

Monica Lennon said Marra had denied party members a “bold” set of policies to campaign on during May’s election.

In a separate attack, a source accused Marra of wanting to sack public sector staff to save money as the party’s finance spokesperson.

Nominations open today for the contest to succeed Anas Sarwar as Scottish Labour leader.

Four MSPs – Marra, Lennon, Joe Fagan and Katy Clark – are all interested in the job.

Marra, who has considerable support among fellow parliamentarians, is facing scrutiny of previous positions.

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He was in charge of Labour’s widely-panned Holyrood manifesto, described by one insider as “boring and dull”.

As finance spokesperson, he also put his name to press releases criticising a rise in the civil service and quango headcount.

Some of the staff in these public sector posts are represented by Labour-supporting trade unions.

One of the unions, Unison, has said the next Scottish Labour leader must stop SNP Government plans to axe up to 20,000 jobs.

In December, Marra said: “Despite promises to cut the cost of government, headcount continues to spiral and taxpayers are picking up the bill.

“A Scottish Labour government will cut waste and bureaucracy and put public money where it belongs – in our overstretched public services.”

In March, he said: “This out-of-touch SNP government is writing a blank cheque for its own bloated operation and its ever-growing list of quangos while frontline jobs in key services lag behind or are cut.”

But over the weekend, he said he opposed the SNP Government’s public sector cuts: “We need parliament to deliver for working class communities and that won’t happen with service cuts and job losses on the back of years of SNP mismanagement.”

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Lennon said: “Using Tory language to describe public sector workers is why Scottish Labour has lost credibility.

“It shouldn’t take a leadership contest to realise we shouldn’t be taking an axe to public sector jobs.

“While Michael Marra’s change of position is welcome, he should apologise to the colleagues, members, and trade unions who were denied a bold, progressive manifesto.”

She added: “We’ve seen too many candidates talk left to win trade union support, only to veer right once elected.

“I’ve consistently championed a different approach – under my leadership, Scottish Labour will always respect public sector workers because high-quality public services are impossible without them.”

A senior party source said of his weekend statement: “This stinks of the worst kind of politics. Party members are sick of politicians saying one thing in parliament and another in public.

“If Michael thinks public sector workers should be sacked to save money it’s no wonder he is telling everyone who will listen that he wants a coronation to deny members of the party a vote on the next leader.”

Marra said: “I’ll never apologise for being a team player and working to deliver a Labour government. I worked with the leadership to help produce a costed manifesto which results clearly show did not attract sufficient public support.

“My own preference is for our policy prospectus to be more radical and clearly rooted in Labour values and I will be outlining some of those ideas during this contest. I want to bring the Labour movement together and develop a platform that is distinctively Labour. We can only do that by uniting and working as a team.”

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Marra was vice chair of the party’s Scottish Policy Forum which produced the original broad platform.

The manifesto itself was agreed unanimously by the party’s Scottish Joint Policy Committee, which was chaired by Sarwar and included representatives from the unions.

Pauline McNeill and Tracy Gilbert, Co-Chairs of Marra’s campaign, said:

“Michael has spent the last week listening to colleagues,and everyone has been clear that the last thing the party needs is for a culture of negative anonymous quotes and briefings to continue, party members deserve better than this.

“We would urge all campaigns to dissociate themselves from that behaviour.”