WENDY Alexander has experienced a torrid first six months as Scottish Labour leader.
Taking over last summer following Jack McConnell's resignation, she inherited a party still bitter from its first electoral defeat for a generation. She set about trying to reform her party, get it used to being in opposition, and one of her first ac
ts was to go to the UK Labour conference and apologise for the election defeat.
But then she became mired in a row over an illegal £ 950 payment to her leadership campaign fund, a controversy that escalated, threatening to bring her brief career as a party leader to an abrupt end. She was eventually cleared of any intentional wrongdoing by the Electoral Com m is sion .
Ms Alexander did suffer from back-biting and internal criticism over her attitude and approach in the Holyrood chamber, with some Labour MSPs feeling she was being beaten by Alex Salmond every week. Her decision to focus on small, apparently unconnected, events each week fuelled the impression that she was strug gling.
However, a series of more focused and aggressive performances have rescued the situation, to a large extent.
With all that behind her, this week's Scottish Labour Conference, which starts today, represents Ms Alexander's first opportunity to stamp her authority on the Scottish Labour Party and set it in the direction she wants to go.
Q & A: WENDY ALEXANDER You have had a very tough six months as Scottish Labour leader. Have there been times when you felt like quitting?
No. Anyone who gets into politics knows it can be a rough trade. The political weather changes very quickly.
Who would have thought just a couple of months ago that Alex Salmond would be facing demonstrations when he steps out of his limousine, or that his flagship policy of local income tax would seem to be holed below the waterline within a couple of weeks of it making the light of day?
Who would have expected us to carry the day in the parliament in all three debates last week?
This is your first Scottish Labour Conference as party leader, but it is also the first time the party has been in opposition at its annual get-together since devolution. How difficult is that going to be for you?
It's hugely exciting because, in your first leader's speech, you get the opportunity really to set out your stall. Of course, defeat is never easy, but we are ten months on from that; we are almost a quarter of the way through this new parliament. There has been a lot of soul-searching and reflection, but I detect a feeling that the party is really moving on and now wanting to set the agenda.
We have been doing that in the parliament on big issues like the future of childhood, the nature of skills, and they are the sorts of issues which we will be taking to the floor of the conference this week.
So, although defeat was difficult, I think the party has picked itself up and is in good heart.
The Labour Party has lost members, activists and money over the past few years. You need more of all three to win the next election. How are you going to do that?
I think you probably find all mass-membership organisations, even ones we always used to talk about, like the RSPB, are finding a decline in membership, and that's totally because people's lives are changing. Ten years ago, if you wanted to talk to more than two people simultaneously, you had to go to a meeting. and now a very large number of us go on the web. I think really, behind the scenes, the single most important reforming change that we have made in the Labour Party in Scotland, and none of it has been visible, has been to move our entire campaigning infrastructure on to an online environment.
There is no doubt that in 1997 we felt we were ahead of the campaigning game and leading the field, but there were areas where we were out-campaigned ten years on, and one of the huge contributory factors to that was that we were operating in a CD-Rom and disc environment, and we didn't have a whole campaigning infrastructure for identifying Labour voters, for communicating with them that was on the web. We have moved that whole contact chain; all of that has moved online in the last six months.
Behind the scenes, there is a huge programme of training, for transforming the skills base of lay activists and lay organisers to work in that new online environment, to catch up some of the ground that we have lost.
Is that an admission that you were out-campaigned by the SNP last year?
I think certainly we were handicapped by the fact that we weren't online in the way the SNP were online, and we moved very quickly to fix that.
Is there anything else organisationally that you have done, or want to do, or need to do, to get Labour in a position where it can out-campaign the SNP in 2011?
Before, with governments talking to governments, we didn't need to worry about co-ordination at the highest level. But we have now established at the very highest level a joint liaison committee.
It is for Team Labour, whether Westminster and Holyrood, local government or the trade unions, to talk to each other regularly at the highest level, and that helps to set the strategic direction.
We have moved on from having our organisation simply being generalist to being specialist – specialising them in various areas of expertise.
We have acknowledged the fact that we haven't had a genuinely Scottish organisation for our councillors ever before, and we have moved to fix that with the Scottish Association of Labour Councillors. We have a distinctive Labour presence in local government.
We recognise that, although there are very large numbers of people in our ethnic communities who support the Labour Party, we haven't always allowed people from those ethnic communities to be properly represented in our own structures, and one of the things we will do at conference is launch an ethnic minorities taskforce and, indeed, we envisage having a full-time support function in place, very, very shortly.
In an environment where there are different boundaries and a large number of elected representatives, we need a candidates' agreement, which really becomes a contract between the party and its elected representatives, about expectations on both sides.
These are some of the reforms. It is not the whole of the programme, but phase one in dealing with our organisational challenges, all underpinned by moving the party on to an online, web environment for all of its campaigning activity.
What has become apparent to us is that, probably in four of the next five years, there will be an election, and where there is an election every year, rather than once every five years, you have to service and resource and support your activists in a very different way than we have in the past.
What is the big idea which is going to win you the next election?
We will offer new life chances to people in Scotland. Actually, improving their own lives is of much more interest to the people of Scotland than institutional or constitutional change.
This will come down to a choice between the people's priorities and Alex Salmond's priorities. The important thing is for Labour to make sure it is properly in tune with the people's priorities.
What are the people's priorities?
They want their children to get the best start in life. It's not enough just to give all three- and four-year-olds free nursery places; it is critical that every vulnerable two-year-old in Scotland gets a nursery place, a programme the SNP are killing off the pilot project in June this year.
I would expect us to be bringing forward amendments to try and see that decision reversed, because it is short-sighted.
There is an increasing concern over the character of childhood needing to change. That is why we brought forward a play strategy for Scotland, that children need safe outdoor places to play in and the parents need enough time to play with them.
There is a concern that our school system tends to the complacent. Killing the Schools for Ambition programme is a disastrous mistake. We need to move much more to personalised, one-on-one education and teaching within the system.
I think that the notion that the choices that we want to give people leaving school, not necessarily compelling them to stay on at school, the choice will either be to go to university, to stay on at school, or to go to a modern apprenticeship. That's the right way to go.
There is a selection of areas. There are more I will talk about in my speech, ways in which Scottish society wants change and sees a government that is obsessed by the short-term, rather than the long-term changes: like, how do we make sure that all children in our schools get the best chances – that's not a short-term project, that's a long-term project; that's critical to life chances.
You talked about the people's priorities versus Alex Salmond's priorities. Aren't people entitled to ask why you are spending so much time setting up a Scottish Constitutional Commission?
With respect, I am not. We have appointed a group of independent experts and I am happy to allow them to get on with the job. I only wish the government would do the same; they only seem to trust themselves and their own ranting bloggers to continue this discussion.
What would you say to those who say this Scottish Constitutional Commission is just playing into the hands of Alex Salmond, because it's going to loosen the ties between Scotland and Westminster?
Wanting the best for Scotland should never be seen as some political fix – it's doing what's in the best interests of the nation.
One of the interesting things is that, when we give Scotland the chance to air its views, it will actually say: we like the essentials of the devolution settlement.
I think the number of people who say: "We don't want education, health or criminal justice to be decided in Scotland" will be tiny and, conversely, the number of people who say: "I want financial services regulation or consumer law or employment law or pensions to come to Scotland" will also be commensurately small.
I think once it gets down to work, the interesting thing will be the extent to which people say: "The essentials of this settlement are sound and there is much more we can do within the settlement."
But – and I am no Johnny-come-lately to this – we haven't sufficiently matched power with responsibility on the financial side of things, and that is the area where I think a fresh look is appropriate.
How much support and help do you get from Gordon Brown?
I talk to the Prime Minister when I have to. I suspect the last time I spoke to him was a month ago. It's not a daily conversation.
Six months ago, people were saying: "Will Wendy be her own person?" and now we have a constitutional commission that is reviewing both the powers and the finance of the Scottish Parliament.
That is a decision I put on the agenda and I am glad it has come to fruition. We have done it on the basis of persuading others that the right approach was cross-party, in the first instance, north and south of the Border, and cross-Border.
How well do you get on with Alex Salmond personally? Do you like him?
I don't know him particularly well as an individual, and I think politics should be about the issues.
He and I are never going to agree about the future of Scotland, but nor do I think it helps to fuel personal animosity in politics. I think the public think there is rather too much of that around already.
Do you respect him as a politician?
I don't respect his vision for Scotland, but I think all party leaders have secured their positions because their parties feel they have a contribution to make.
What was the last CD you bought, or do you have an iPod and what do you have on it?
I don't have an iPod, although I have been known to listen to my husband's, and mercifully my children are not yet of the stage of demanding their own. The last CD I bought was children's action songs on Saturday for the long car trip I intend to take them on, on Monday, after conference is over and we have a few days off.
Do you sit with Classic FM, or do you listen to Radio 4 all the time, or what is your choice?
On Saturday mornings, Classic FM has been known to be on. I have to say my husband has decided to take up, or rather to retake up, the guitar in his retirement, having been a pop star in his youth – the Denvers, they were contemporaneous with the Beatles, of that ilk. They were a very old band who once made an LP, which has recently been re-released – you can download it.
So for the moment I have been in one room composing my conference speech to the endless strains of perfecting the chords of A, E and F.
I think we have had Auld Lang Syne and the theme tune to Night Garden (a CBeebies show] more than I would care to ever hear again.
What do you do to relax at home?
Play with the kids.
