Step aside brother.

The next few weeks are my least favourite period of the whole year. Autumn's glories are fast fading and all of that season's rituals passed. The September weekend; Halloween; Guy Fawkes night; Remembrance Sunday and, probably now also on that list, the start of Strictly. Yet the Winter Solstice and the Christmas Festival of celebration to follow are still a bit too far away to provide (forgive the cliche) a light on the horizon.

Yet last week was a good week. A vaccine was announced. Biden was confirmed as the winner of the US Presidential election to the satisfaction of everybody except Trump. Scotland qualified for a major football tournament. In UK politics Dominic Cummings was despatched back to Barnard Castle to spend more time with his family, while the Labour Party NEC was decisively regained by those who are more interested in winning elections than in excusing anti Semitism. In Scotland, there was even a straw in the wind that the pandemic fuelled bubble of enthusiasm for Scottish independence might be beginning to deflate.   

But in the midst of all this good news, one grim spire stood standing. Richard Leonard's ongoing disastrous leadership of the Scottish Labour Party. While it was good to be reminded by last week's events that you don't always lose, Scottish Labour remains in a mindset of not even trying to win.

There was a by-election in Edinburgh on Thursday. In what as recently as the 2012 local government elections was a Labour Stronghold. Not only did we not come second, we very nearly came fourth behind the Greens. 

Now, at a UK level, there seems little doubt that the accession of Starmer has led to a Labour recovery. I actually have some sympathy with the Corbynistas argument that had Corbyn been the only problem for Labour we should actually be doing better still but equally the more sentient of them would concede that, for whatever reason, we have gone from being consistently behind the Tories under their hero to being at least neck and neck.

But there has been no recovery in Scotland. That despite the following undisputed facts.

1. While Johnson's management of the pandemic has been hapless, Sturgeon's, presentation aside, has been at least as bad. Indeed, factoring in population density, arguably significantly worse. Tellingly, even Devi Sridhar, asked on Channel 4 News weeks back whether Scotland had done better than England, pretended to misunderstand the question and talked instead about something else. And nobody would surely have been keener than her to answer with an emphatic "Yes", had that been conceivably possible to justify. 

2. There is something fishy about the Salmond case. Something that is, behind the scenes, causing a very real schism within the SNP. A schism that has led or is leading a significant faction within the Party to contemplate removing Sturgeon from her current position of leadership, personal opinion poll ratings notwithstanding. Even today,  Sturgeon is spending your and my money to try to get a court order to prevent the publication of a paragraph in an email she sent to the Permanent Secretary about this matter. A most unusual thing to have to do if she was truly taking no part in the process, then or now. Jackie Baillie is playing a blinder on this but Leonard is looking on like Zelig. He seems to misunderstand that being "present but not involved" was not one of the greatest merits of our recently departed UK leader. 

3. The Scottish Government is tired. That is not a partisan point. All government's get tired after too long in office. Clement Attlee's revolutionary government of the left got tired, perhaps to soon but after delivering so much. Just as Margaret Thatcher's revolutionary government of the right also got tired. If we were being honest, excepting Brown and Darling's response to the crash, the latter years of New Labour leave little in the memory. But as each failed someone had to be positioned to pick up the baton. The sole purpose of the SNP running the Scottish Government was to have an independence referendum. They did. They lost. No matter how much they might pretend otherwise to emolliate their kilt wearing, flag waving, rank and file, there will not be another such event in the immediate future. Even if there were somehow, the nationalists do not have a coherent argument to make. This is hardly a difficult argument for an opposition to articulate. 

Yet Scottish Labour remains utterly irrelevant to the political process. Obsessed with internal wrangling over who gets the distinction of failing to get elected as a Labour candidate next May. A complete policy free zone. An organisational shambles. 

Now, just as Corbyn was not the only problem for the UK Party almost a year ago, Richard Leonard is not the only problem for us here in Scotland. It wasn't a left wing leadership who lost the last Holyrood elections or indeed presided over our original collapse in 2015. But there is simply no way his continued occupation in office is helping the situation. He has, to be fair, upped his media profile but it is too late. Nobody is listening and, excepting a running commentary on internal matters and a wholly confused narrative as to where we stand on a second referendum, he has, anyway, literally nothing of interest to say. Anybody think that Anas or Jackie would not improve matters somewhat in what should be the only important measure of performance, how well would we do at the polls? Can they win a Scottish General Election, in the sense of gaining a plurality of votes? Almost certainly not. But can they gain enough ground to deny the nationalists an overall majority? That remains to me a real possibility. And perhaps someone should be saying what we might then do with the balance of power. 

But time is short. I've long been of the view that there should not be a Holyrood poll next May. Campaigning would be too difficult in current circumstances. No door knocking; no street stalls or leafleting; no public meetings or hustings; no rallies; no stickers or balloons. The result of the US Presidential Election might have been satisfying but the process leading up to it was not. I suspect with a less controversial incumbent it might have been delayed by cross Party agreement.

But there is no way the SNP will want to waste their current poll advantage brought about by their (or at least Nicola's) impression of being the, pandemic assisted, only show in town. They also will want the election over before any pandemic post mortems have time to be concluded and before they are finally obliged to publish their much delayed report into the state of Scottish education. 

So, it will be May. Less than five months away. For Scottish Labour, less than five months away from disaster. 

The STUC is currently running a campaign to increase the number of women in leadership roles under the slogan "Step aside brother". A proud trade unionist, Richard should take the hint. Otherwise, as a distinguished historian of the Scottish Labour Party, he may well end up writing its obituary.