Labour’s leadership hopefuls go head-to head in a hustings in Dundee tonight. We hear what Kezia Dugdale and Ken Macintosh will do if they are elected to the position later this year.
Ken Macintosh Focused on Scotland’s future, not Labour’s pastI joined the Labour Party for one very simple reason because I wanted to build a fairer world and change our society for the better. It’s the same reason millions of people have voted Labour throughout their life.
The same reason why for decades the good people of Dundee voted for my party. Scotland and Dundee, however, sent Labour a loud and clear message in May and if we want to regain your trust, we must listen and we must change.
I want to make that change. I want to take the party in a new direction, one that’s more democratic, devolved and positive about Scotland’s future. It’s not enough to say we’re against the Tories, we need to show you the doors to educational opportunity we will open.
We told you we were against the referendum but didn’t do enough to describe the road to prosperity and success we would follow instead. I want to offer you the integrity that guides me and which lies at the heart of our movement.
I’ve been in the Labour Party all my adult life, but I only stood for election because of the Scottish Parliament. I’m a family man with six children and I’ve had a career outside of politics.
Whenever tested, I have always put the people and the values I care about first, ahead of power or position.
Under my leadership, Labour will be less tribal, less partisan and more willing to work with others. My whole approach and style will be different less aggressive and adversarial, more collaborative and cooperative.
I believe that in order to build a decent, compassionate and kind society, you have to demonstrate those values yourself in your language and behaviour. We need to be willing to build progressive alliances across traditional political divides, to reach out to civic Scotland and widen our appeal to every part of the country. Above all, we need to focus on Scotland’s future, not Labour’s past.Kezia Dugdale I will close the education gapThere’s a statistic that makes me shudder. It has nothing to do with polls and it doesn’t involve electoral arithmetic. It’s much more important than that.
More than a quarter of children in Dundee grow up in poverty. That’s an astonishingly grim figure. Only in Glasgow is it worse.
A new report out today also confirms that kids living in more deprived areas are more likely to leave school unable to read and write properly compared to children from well-off backgrounds.
If that doesn’t make you want to change things, then nothing will.
It’s why I want to lead the Labour Party in Scotland, to do something about this great injustice. It’s my personal mission.
Now the solution isn’t to drag the well-off children back. Closing the performance gap between rich and poor by making the rich worse off doesn’t help anybody. The way to make things better is to lift up those at the bottom.
The SNP have been in government for more than eight years in Edinburgh. They also run Dundee City Council. They have the power to do something about the poverty and lack of opportunity that blights so many communities in the city.
Too often, though, their answer is to blame somebody else.
I would use the major new powers coming to Scotland to do something about the inequality we see in Dundee and across the country. Under a Labour Government the very richest few would pay a little bit more, with a 50p rate of tax on those earning more than £150,000. That would allow us to invest an extra £125 million so that we can employ more classroom assistants and literacy experts.
We just cannot stand by whilst poorer kids leave school without the skills they need to get on in life. If I am elected it’s what I will campaign on every day.