What now for the Scottish Labour leadership?

Colin Smyth, Scottish Labour’s general secretary, must have felt like an unlucky punter with a host of selections in the Grand National as the results came through last night.

As it became clear that the party would need a new leader, he would have considered the options: Andy Kerr? No, fallen at the first fence. What about David Whitton? (Didn’t get past Becher’s.) Charlie Gordon? (Couldn’t clear the water jump.) By then, he would have started to get desperate, ripping up his first-choice betting slips and going to the outsiders. The message, though, would have been the same. Tom McCabe, Des McNulty, Frank McAveety? All fallers (by now he would have been getting really desperate). What about those civic leaders from Edinburgh, Lesley Hinds and Ewan Aitken? Taken out by loose horses miles from the end, and so it would have gone on. Mr Smyth would have been hard-hearted, though, not to smile at the irony that, by the end, he was still holding the ticket with Iain Gray’s name on it. The Scottish Labour leader had survived the election – just – so at least the party has a leader. What the leader doesn’t have, though, is a party to lead, and that is what will inevitably spark his departure. Mr Gray may go today, he may go tomorrow. He may go after the weekend or he might wait, knowing that – with his party is in such turmoil – he should give it as much time as possible to find a way through before quitting. But go he will. No leader, particularly one as honourable as Mr Gray, can take his party through the sort of beating it has just endured and stay on. So, amid all the carnage of flailing limbs, broken saddles and riderless nags of this particular race, who are the runners and riders still standing at the finishing line and are there any who could take on the Scottish Labour leadership? There are really only four: Johann Lamont The deputy leader of Scottish Labour, Ms Lamont hung on by just 623 votes in Glasgow Pollok but, in doing so, found herself virtually isolated in a sea of SNP seats in Glasgow. Ms Lamont is feisty and combative, but she is not an orator. Dour to the point of satire, she has shown herself to be aggressive and tough in taking on Nicola Sturgeon in the chamber – but she is very much part of Labour’s problem. Ms Lamont was a key part of the Labour campaign team. She was partly in charge of the strategy which went so badly wrong, so putting her in charge would be seen as rewarding failure and a peculiarly backwards step. Malcolm Chisholm Mr Chisholm is a wily campaigner and a fighter – he showed that by heading off the SNP challenge in Edinburgh North and Leith to become the sole remaining constituency Labour MSP in Edinburgh. He is also a shrewd and experienced politician. A left-winger with a conscience (he was the first minister to resign from the Blair government at Westminster), but he has trouble with authority and is seen as more of a maverick than a unifier. Mr Chisholm also hardly represents a new Labour generation, and he is also not the most inspiring of characters or speakers when that is what his party needs. Hugh Henry Mr Henry was praised and rewarded last year for his work as a committee chair at Holyrood and he did a terrific job holding the Scottish government to account over the Gathering fiasco. He is an experienced Holyrood campaigner, another left-winger and somebody who is not afraid to stand up to Alex Salmond. Once known as “Hangdog Hugh”, however, Mr Henry has such an unfortunately dour demeanour that he too is unlikely to inspire those around him in this desperate hour – although he might unify them, at least for the short term. Jackie Baillie Labour’s health spokeswoman is the clear frontrunner. She is a more centrist candidate, so is able to unify the party. She is relatively untainted by the debacle of this year’s election and has shown herself able to serve in the front-bench teams of different and disparate Labour leaders. Before last night, she was the outsider of the main challengers for the Scottish Labour leadership. Now, thanks to the carnage wrought all over west and central Scotland, she is the clear favourite. Having looked after the health brief, she also has pretty solid contacts in the unions – which can only help her cause.

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3. Daily roundup: Scottish Labour, 19 April