Mandy Rhodes interviews Wendy Alexander, the newly crowned leader of Scottish Labour, on the day she elected the members of her shadow Cabinet
There is one thing that everyone agrees on about Wendy Alexander; she’s much nicer than her brother…It’s an interesting observation – not least because she is not seen as that touchy-feely herself – but because for a woman apparently so big-brained, so politically astute and so tactically sophisticated, she remains defined by the men in her life; daughter of the manse, sister of Douglas, prodigy of Dewar, ally of Brown, enemy of McConnell. In fact interestingly, the one man that seems to be defined by her rather than the other way around is her husband, the renowned economist, Brian Ashcroft, who has just announced that he intends to become a full-time house husband to look after their young twins, allowing his wife to concentrate on her political career.
The media portrayal of Alexander is so inherently sexist that as a woman, you immediately feel some sympathy for her, no matter how fearsome the prospect of being ‘Wendied’, verb; being torn a strip off, might be. For, as so often happens, when it comes to describing women in what is still viewed as a man’s world, the media resorts to gender stereotypes. If Wendy gets annoyed then she is seen as hysterical, if she gets lost in thought, then she is of another world and when she resigns from a ministerial brief and goes on to get married, have twins, move house, deliver a series of economic lectures, write two books and remain as an MSP, she is seen as a quitter or a flibbertigibbet. A man, meanwhile, might have been viewed as strong, brooding and principled. Ah, equality, it’s a wonderful achievement. But then, that’s perhaps why La Alexander has almost exclusively filled her Shadow Cabinet with soul sisters.
You get the impression Wendy likes being around strong women, and despite all the talk of her father being such an influence on her as a man of the cloth – she did once express an interest in being a missionary after a spell in Africa - I ask her whether her mother contributed much to the way she turned out. She laughs uproariously - it’s a great laugh.
“My mother has been a huge influence. She was a doctor, she worked phenomenally hard, she was completely devoted to the NHS, was a haematologist 30 years ago when the prospects of people with leukaemia were less rosy than they are now and I suppose that was one of the things that gives you a sense of what’s important in life and what’s ephemeral. We have one life here and it is about what contribution you make in that time and she was, she is, a strong individual, and a strong woman. And generally, I suppose, she has passed that on to her daughters. She believes absolutely in the notion of public service and showed us all as we were growing up how to juggle.”
And talking of juggling, we meet on the day that she is building her Shadow Cabinet and her famously quick-fire mode of chat is only interrupted by the odd question that I can squeeze in as she draws breath and the phone calls on her mobile from MSPs accepting (maybe even declining if what is later rumoured about the former education Minister, Hugh Henry, is true) her offer of a position. Heaven knows what is being said on the other end: there is certainly no room for breathless acceptance speeches, as she clips, ‘right, good, that’s all I need to know’ and the phone goes down. So, obviously, I ask her who is in the Cabinet and given that this interview will be published a full week after the interview has taken place and the appointments announced, I expect a full and frank disclosure. Wrong.
“I can not in any print interview give you an exclusive before it’s announced,” she says. I look puzzled and explain again our publication date. I ponder the ‘Wendy of another world’ references.
“Who knows, anything could happen, someone could fall under a bus, break a leg… all of that sort of thing, and I mean, there are all sorts of scenarios.”
Right…ok... So, what is the thinking that goes on in building a team?
“It’s about letting people play to their strengths. One of the things I’ve talked about is the need for Labour to listen and learn, and if you want to listen and learn then you need to let people play to their strengths because that’s where they’ll excel and in areas where people feel they have an expertise and a knowledge, they sometimes are more comfortable with not going along with what’s received wisdom. In an area like education or health, some of the big ones, if we’ve said we need to listen and learn and change then being willing to not simply be bound by the way we’ve always done things before has been important to me in my thinking. I think the other thing about being in opposition is that you don’t have any salaries to pay people so there’s not the carrot of more money, it’s more about hard work and
commitment. I was determined to be very inclusive in my approach. I think that the night of the long knives was not my predecessor’s finest hour.”
Oh, so is she using the opportunity to take revenge on recreants?
“No.”
Are you looking for people that will just agree with you?
“No.”
Is the former First Minister going to be in the Shadow Cabinet?
“No.” Pause. “That’s his own request.”
Is that something that you would have considered?
“The former First Minister made it clear with me that he wanted to move on to challenges new beyond representing Motherwell and I have respected that. Also, Jack is on no committees, at his own request. I am very anxious, for his sake, not to give the impression that Motherwell won’t be represented. Yes, we had the discussion and he wants time to re-establish his next life.
I was wholly happy to respect and accommodate that.” It was, co-incidentally, exactly five years to the day before the historic defeat in this year’s Scottish elections that Wendy Alexander turned up at the then First Minister Jack McConnell’s house in Wishaw, early on a Friday morning, to tell him she wanted out of frontline politics. It may have come out of the blue for him but for those commentators that had seen her struggle under an onerous brief – McConnell appointed her communities minister then overloaded her with three big portfolios, enterprise, transport and lifelong learning – which some believed he had given her as a punishment for past wrongs, it provided great debate. While
McConnell tried to work out how to break the news to the press, she was jetting off for a girlies’ weekend to Amsterdam.
For the conspiracists, she knew exactly what she was doing; destabilising the First Minister, ensuring she was not part of an executive that might become tainted, securing her long-term future as a potential leader and making sure she could have it all – career, husband and family – and ultimately, power. She dismisses this as ill-founded gossip and said she simply wanted to focus on an academic career and her family. “Never once did I say that the job I had been given was too much for me to handle,” she says vehemently. however, it has all worked our rather like the conspiracists mapped out…
Earlier this year, faced with a resurgent SNP, McConnell brought her back into the ministerial fold and made her chair of Holyrood’s influential finance committee, signalling her return to frontline politics. There was an election in Scotland and a prime ministerial change in Westminster. She had also been spotted running, had had her hair restyled, started wearing a natty line in smart suits and was being touted around the Scottish newspaper editors. Sure signs of change afoot.
However, even one so smart as Wendy could not have predicted the outcome on May 3 when Labour lost power in Scotland and had to wake up to the humiliation of a victory by a single seat to Alex Salmond’s Scottish National Party, ending Labour’s four-decades-long domination of Scotland.
How Alexander now handles the challenge of uniting the party and winning back voters is being keenly watched. She
is known for her intellect and loyalty to Labour, but is seen by some as lacking the common touch and political nous to be flexible, which the post requires.
“It’s a big challenge. It’s a huge responsibility and it’s very exciting. It’s a good time to be leading in this respect; when you lose you have the opportunity to ask why? And on the back of that, to change the way things are done and that’s also to give even the fundamentals the priority they deserve. For me at least, the fundamentals are about families in Scotland, they are about kids getting a good start in life and I tried to structure my team around people who would be comfortable having those discussions both with Scotland and with people who try daily to make Scotland a better place.”
But surely, having been in power for almost a decade in Scotland, Labour had more than its fair chance to get the fundamentals right? Why did it lose the election and was she not party to that? Was some of it down to the party appearing arrogantly anti-independence and unwilling to listen to the public?
“I think collectively in Labour, and I was certainly part of this, that in our attempts to argue the case for why we should continue to live together in one island, we were in some sense perceived as saying Scotland couldn’t go it alone and that was never the argument. The argument was, what was the best and most desirable relationship for Scots going forward? Do we need to walk out in order to walk tall and our argument is you don’t have to walk out in order to walk tall, but I think that in prosecuting that argument, we were perceived to be saying that Scotland couldn’t go it alone, wasn’t good enough. That is not what we were saying but we all take some responsibility for that being the perception and I include myself in that.
“I think generally there were two reasons that we lost. I think it’s fair to say that the start of 2007 was not an easy time for the party nationally and that certainly was a contributory factor but I also think in Scotland, there was a strong sense that it was time for a change. I do, however, think that when people were looking for change, they were looking for social and economic change not for constitutional and institutional change and that I think is the challenge for the Labour Party. The voters wondered whether we were on their side. The way I see it is, people looked at the Labour Party and they wondered, do you really understand my life as it is lived now? I think people’s basic values don’t change but I think their aspirations do. I’ve talked about aspirations being a bit like music or fashion. The aspirations that you have are different from what your children will have and different again from your parents and we need to stay in tune with those changing aspirations.”
Oops, this is verging on the ‘of another world’ stuff. For a smart woman who has expressed the wish for more listening than talking, she answers questions immediately without thinking about the answer and then sometimes has to stop halfway through to think and get back on track… she continues.
“Well, I think that the way I describe it is that Scotland is an immensely more prosperous place than it was before, it is also a fairer place than it was before. And by that I mean that 700,000 children have been lifted out of poverty in that time, deaths through hypothermia, what used to be horribly called excess winter deaths, are almost a thing of the past because of measures like central heating systems for those without. I think that social cohesion is not as strong as it should be, part of that is about global forces and also the government does not control wages at the top end of the spectrum and there are widening inequalities driven by factors beyond government. But I do think three of the evils that I highlighted the other week; the 400 plus dead from drug abuse, the up to 50,000 children who are growing up with drug-abusing parents and indeed, the epidemic of alcohol abuse, are still there to be tackled and if you’re not in politics to care about these issues then you shouldn’t be in politics.”
Of course, Alexander is steeped in Scottish politics. Alongside her younger brother Douglas, now international development secretary and a close confidant of the Prime Minister, she grew up with senior Labour figures visiting the family home. She was a researcher for the maverick MP, George Galloway, and a special adviser to the late Donald Dewar, the architect of devolution, becoming a minister in his first administration. She is also widely regarded as a Brownite although she says the relationship with the PM is “over-egged”. For some, she represents a formulaic approach to politics that lacks emotion and is more a paternalistic, even churchy, approach to helping people in poverty rather than helping them out of it. As well as enjoying a better relationship with Brown than her predecessor, she is also tarred by the same brush as Brown, which may come down to an argument between Britishness and Scottishness. She would deny this.
“I’ve said I’m my own politician with my own causes. The record suggests that and the people of Scotland will reach their judgement over the coming months and years.
I’ve said I’m my own politician with my own causes. The record suggests that and the people of Scotland will reach their judgement over the coming months and years. 
Part of politics is caricature but I am completely comfortable that people will make a judgement on my leadership skills and the team I bring together and the things I want to achieve.”
For or against?
Trident?
“I am aware that there are incredibly strong views held on both sides of this issue on both sides of the border. It is not that Scotland feels one way and England feels another way. I think that the important thing is that I am not going to spend my time trying to use the Scottish Parliament as a forum for trying to debate or resolve issues that the people of Scotland have properly chosen should be resolved somewhere else. So it seems to me that the people of Scotland chose ten years ago that their elected representatives to the UK parliament should decide how the defence of this country was handled and in the same way that I don’t want Westminster trying to tell me how to run the health service in Scotland, I don’t want to be spending my time debating issues which the people of Scotland decided it was theirs to resolve.”
Faith schools?
“I am aware that they are [a] long established part of the Scottish educational system. I understand why they came into existence. The education they provide, I don’t think there is any desire amongst the Catholic community for that to change.”
Independence?
“I just don’t think Scotland needs to walk out of the UK in order to walk tall. I think it would send a very sad signal to the rest of the world about our inability to continue to operate as one state within the UK. I have made it clear that I think that there are ways in which the partnership can be strengthened but I think as the international examples show, I think the example for Scotland is success rather than succession.”
It will be this tussle over powers for the Scottish Parliament that will mark the third session out from any other and she is clear that the Union remains the right place to be.
”The reason you get up in the morning if you’re SNP is institutional change, to change the constitutional status of Scotland. If you are in the Labour Party, you tend to get up in the morning because you want a fairer and a just society and in that sense, you see that the greatest scar on Scottish life has been poverty rather than a border. And that’s a difference between me and my party and Alex Salmond and his.”
However, she would not deny that there are issues specific to Scotland that might require a Scottish answer and that could also involve the need for more powers for the Parliament.
“A fifth of the Scottish population live in the Highlands and Islands so that means that there is a huge issue around land in Scotland whether indeed to do with access issues or community land ownership. These are much, much more important in the Scottish context than they are in a UK context. Similarly, if you look at the tradition of social housing and also of community-based housing associations in Scotland, there are issues, land and housing, that have particularly strong Scottish dimensions, similarly of scarcity of population, there are issues of transport so, for example, the desire to make every school a good school is even more important in circumstances where geography means that children will go to the local schools. Of course, there are issues on which there are uniquely Scottish dimensions. There are, however, also issues which are common and I don’t think that we can simply proclaim a policy Scottish and believe that that is any guide to its desirability or its efficiency and that’s one of the challenges which is facing the government we currently have.”
As the Labour Party’s first female leader, Wendy Alexander has promised to return Labour to power in Scotland. To return Scotland to Labour she may, in this political world dominated by men, have to also prove to be her own woman.
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