If to be a member of the Labour Party these days you need to be an optimist, you have to reckon that Matt Kerr, the left-wing candidate for Scottish Labour’s Deputy Leadership, is more optimistic than most.

Having come within sixty votes of unseating an SNP MP in a marginal constituency in 2017, he then dedicated the next two years of his life to the campaign trail. And even after having been beaten on that grim night last December, he didn’t take a deserved rest but immediately threw himself into another campaign. 

More significantly, he has outlined a radical plan of reform for Scottish Labour – and members should take note. It is a plan that shows depth, thought, vision and, yes, an optimism that suggests things can improve if Scottish Labour changes. It is in stark contrast to his opponent, Jackie Baillie MSP, who has offered no plan of substance. Baillie calls herself the ‘change candidate’ despite being on the wrong side of history on a plethora of issues that significantly contributed to Labour’s long, drawn-out decline in Scotland.

Kerr’s policy platform is based on the recognition that power has all too often been distant from the people, with the decisions that affect working-class peoples’ lives being made by Jimmy Reid’s ‘faceless men’ (and women) in the new Scottish establishment: the SNP government and the various private sector and lobbying bodies which crowds around it.

His proposals for greatly strengthened local government and an industrial strategy which would deliver high-skilled, high-paid green jobs draw on his own experience as a councillor in the austerity years in Govan, one of Glasgow’s more deprived areas and once the centre of world shipbuilding. The political gambit operating here is that Scottish Labour ahead of the 2021 elections should hold the SNP to account for its numerous failings in government (including in local government) but that also offers a convincing socialist alternative. 

As an activist in Labour of decades standing, Kerr’s position on Scottish independence isn’t particularly ambiguous. He opposes it and campaigned against it in 2014, arguing a socialist case for remaining part of the UK. But he is clear about how radically the British state has to change.

Kerr supports the further devolution of powers with, for example, greater borrowing powers to fund an industrial strategy and finance public projects with public funds rather than private provision. Kerr stands in a Home Rule tradition running from Keir Hardie through the Independent Labour Party to Gordon Brown’s Red Paper in the 1970s.

He is equally clear, however, in order to be democratic socialists, we must uphold our democratic principles and that means not arguing for the blocking of referendum if a mandate emerges. It is for the people of Scotland to decide. But that doesn’t mean a blank slate – Matt Kerr’s proposals make clear that people must have confidence in the process and key questions, for example around the currency, should be answered so that Scots are able to make an informed decision if a referendum was to happen.

It’s often forgotten that, far more than the Scottish political and media classes, it is the left which can claim to be the mother of the devolved settlement. It was the National Union of Mineworkers’ Scottish Area which began to force devolution onto the agenda in the 1960s and it was the Scottish Trades Union Congress in 1972 which advocated for Home Rule in the face of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ work-in.

Currently, SNP politicians find ways to skirt procurement legislation and cower before tycoons like Jim Ratcliffe in a parliamentary chamber under which the iconic miners’ leader Mick McGahey’s ashes were placed. Matt Kerr’s advocacy for a real Home Rule parliament, with full devolution of powers over employment and trade union law, would go some way to addressing that issue by forcing the SNP to take a stand one way or the other. 

Part of Kerr’s appeal lies in the fact that he’s willing to tackle issues other Labour figures have shied away from, whether it’s Universal Basic Income or the need to use local government as a site of resistance for Scottish government cuts. Despite the fact that in living memory, large parts of rural Scotland voted socialist, Scottish Labour has had no convincing offer to them in recent years.

In his plans for comprehensive land reform, Kerr channels the spirit of the legendary Labour Scottish Secretary, Tom Johnston, whose famous book Our Scots Noble Families provoked rage and terror in the Scottish aristocracy at the turn of the century. It can only be hoped that Kerr’s plans eventually prompt similar responses in the Saudi royalty and City of London speculators who have carved up the Highlands in recent years. 

But as important as formal policy is, the change in attitude that Kerr represents is arguably more important. He has been clear that the Better Together campaign was a disastrous error. Campaigning alongside the Tories telling people we are all ‘Better Together’ at a time the same Tories were viciously attacking our people, cutting their jobs, their living standards, housing and their public services was a historic mistake. By contrast, Jackie Baillie, sat on the board of Better Together and was a leading supporter of its doomed knight errant, Jim Murphy, prior to the loss of his seat and nearly forty others in 2015.

On a local level, as a candidate in the years running up to and during the 2019 election, Kerr built strong relationships with many who had been involved in the ‘Yes’ campaign, with the result that he was able to produce huge turnouts for canvassing events. During these, Govan posties would rub shoulders with young Southside hipsters in the effort to win Labour a seat – a coalition the party needs to hold together if it is to have a future.

This support was rooted in a local record, whether it was his backing for the dynamic Living Rents tenants’ union, his trade union activities in the CWU, his work with local food banks and community councils or, indeed, his willingness to muck in with some of the activists’ meetings which organised cultural events. Such activity is the living embodiment of Kerr’s belief that Labour can, and will, only recover if it becomes part of the social fabric of the communities, up and down Scotland, that Labour seeks to represent. The Kerr plan makes clear that reconnecting with communities in this way necessitates a much improved, confident and vibrant Labour Party. 

Of course, Kerr may very well have some of the same challenges that Jeremy Corbyn faced when Labour leader. His plans for a fresh, socialist policy platform will be welcomed by many, but they won’t be welcomed by the New Labour establishment, including several of the party’s representatives in the Scottish parliament. Reports made clear just how many of these sought to undermine Richard Leonard’s leadership almost as soon as he was elected.

Thankfully, Kerr seems to have considered this problem thoughtfully and realises that in order to have a democratic party, we need to move beyond the parliamentary bubbles and bring down the barriers to ordinary working-class people and our talented new generation. The emerging grassroots needs to be given space to shape and advance the party. Kerr has pledged to consider a term limit for regional list MSPs, and will examine how we reserve places so that promising younger members get elected. 

No party has a right to exist. Any Labour Party worth the name has to earn the confidence of those it seeks to represent, most especially those who comprise the near-forty per cent of Labour’s 2010 vote who have supported the SNP since 2015. Scottish Labour has a meaningful choice; it can choose a pioneering left-wing councillor and campaigner from a new generation with new ideas and energy – or it can go back to same old politics that sowed the seeds of our decline. There is only choice for Labour members. It has to be Matt Kerr.