Douglas Alexander’s return to Cabinet office has, according to some, caused chaos and infighting in Scottish Labour. Mr Ian Murray, the Edinburgh South MP, was surprisingly dumped from the UK government on Friday as Keir Starmer announced his first reshuffle since becoming Prime Minister. Murray was however quickly reinstated a day later to a lower-level job, of something or other, at this stage who really cares?

The idea that you would ‘freshen-up’ your team and inject some new energy into it by appointing a man who had left front-line fifteen years ago and was emblematic of Labour failure after his defeat to Mhairi Black in 2024 is quite remarkable. It has similar energy to when Jack McConnell’s return was lauded by journalists like the Second Coming back in 2023 [‘Jack’s Back’].

The Scotsman reports that Alexander’s appointment hasn’t exactly been met with a wave of enthusiasm from his colleagues, referring to a ‘civil war’ [No Scottish Labour MPs have publicly welcomed Douglas Alexander as Scottish Secretary]:

“No Scottish Labour MPs has publicly welcomed Douglas Alexander as Scottish Secretary. None of the 37 Scottish Labour MPs have posted on social media to welcome the East Lothian MP to his new Cabinet role despite Mr Alexander being appointed on Friday.”

“But seven of them paid tribute to the outgoing Scottish Secretary Ian Murray. Mr Murray’s sacking has sparked a civil war in Scottish Labour. Some figures said he had been booted out for not coming to Scotland enough, while one MP blasted Mr Alexander for gunning for the job while Mr Murray was in office.”

The Daily Record, normally a Scottish Labour faithful, got in on the act, leaking damaging quotes from embittered Labour MPs as the story unfolded:

Sources told us that Starmer was increasingly frustrated by Murray’s ‘semi-detached’ attitude, as was Anas Sarwar, but now Alexander has been put in place to ‘crack the whip’ and keep Scottish Labour in-line. One Scottish Labour MP told the Daily Record if he had a £1 for every person who likes Douglas Alexander he’d have 50p. 

Whatever the reasons for Murray getting the chop, his replacement lost no time in asserting that there would be no change of politics.

Once again, we find ourselves in a position where the person meant to represent the people of Scotland in the British government is the first to close down even discussing a democratic settlement. It’s a very dangerous precedent for a political party to say “It doesn’t matter how you vote”. Alexander’s response to Martin Gaissler’s questioning was quiet contempt.

But if Murray-to-Alexander changes little, despite the fury and bitterness within Scottish Labour, nor does the flagellation about Angela Rayner’s departure and the hoo-ha about her replacement. As Labour mose-dives in the opinion polls (north and south of the border) we are asked to be interested in these marginal figures who you have never heard of are going to make a difference. This is the uber-bland politics of managed decline that has become the leitmotif of Labour. The arrival of Bridget Phillipson, Emily Thornberry or ‘Sarah Owen’ won’t make a difference to anyone or anything anywhere.

Labour have a messaging problem in Scotland that won’t be solved by replacing their absentee toady with their star player from the 1990s. In some ways, this is an attempt to just erase the past decade and pretend none of it really happened at all.  In October 2013, Alexander was appointed by Ed Miliband as the party’s chair of general election strategy. Two years later in 2015, he lost his seat to 20 year-old Mhairi Black, in what was one of the worst results for Labour; with forty seats lost to the SNP nationwide. It’s a Janus-faced approach which wants us to – simultaneously – cling on to the result of 2014 as a perpetual and unchallengable totem – and also just screen wipe the last decade and Alexander’s disastrous role. Starmer is a latter-day resurrectionist, digging up the old cadaver of New Labour and selling it to whoever will pay him something for the rotten flesh, which increasingly is, no one at all.

Labour’s attempt to suppress democracy forever is a giveaway about how bankrupt they are of ideas or confidence.  They can only cling to the past for so long before this decrepit strategy falters. When Labour collapse next year at the Holyrood elections, their retrograde strategies will be exposed for what they are. As I said elsewhere [Britain’s Broken, Now What?] : “All of the old post-war certainties of a two-party state in Britain are collapsing. The old duopoly of Labour-Conservative looks at this stage to be doomed, and what will replace them remains unclear.”

In this context, Alexander’s appointment seems bizarre. Out of time and out of place, he is the Secretary of State for Late Britain.