"And great was Labour's Lamontation..."

Rubbernecking on the internal politics of one's political opponents is rarely appreciated.  However, since the Sunday Herald saw fit only to report Labour's leadership election on the fourth page of today's issue, I dare say Johann might welcome the attention, from whatever source. As you'll certainly have heard, Lamont saw off Ken Macintosh, while Tom Harris' hopes of being anointed LOLOTSP ("Leader of Labour outside the Scottish Parliament") were comprehensively disappointed. 

So at last, it is farewell to Iain Gray, the Snark, LOLITSP.  Farewell also, to Labour's suspended animation since May's election? Mibbes aye and mibbes naw.  After the announcement of a Lamont victory at noon yesterday, much muttered was the fact that she appeared to have attracted only 12% of Labour members' votes. Quite reasonably, some folk wondered where the devil the other 88% had disappeared to.  Welcome to Labour's electoral college, made up of three sections. The first, parliamentarians, includes MPs, MSPs and MEPs.  The second is the ordinary membership of the Labour Party, while the third are votes cast by affiliates, including members of affiliated trade unions and socialist societies. Despite the numerical imbalances between them, all three groupings are of equal weight when it comes to awarding the leadership.

While not quite as wonderfully arcane as the process the Venetians used to elect their Doge, for those of us more familiar with one-member-one-vote leadership elections, Labour's approach can seem a bit esoteric. Others are more critical. In today's Scotland on Sunday, Kenny Farquharson describes it as a "flawed, antediluvian antique that needs to be unceremoniously ditched". Whatever its merits or demerits, the process and its results are all rather straightforward if sympathetically presented.  To start us off, three tables showing the percentage of their total support which each candidate attracted from the three voting sections - and where Johann's winning votes came from.

 

And in second place, Ken Macintosh...

 

And bringing up the rear, poor Tom Harris...

For clarity and interest's sake, it is also worth separately pulling out how each of the sections cast their votes.  For example, you'll see that the 12% support from the membership being bandied about with respect to Johann is both true and a truly misleading statistic, seen out of context. While members did prefer Macintosh and Lamont's victory was substantially down to affiliate votes and a more modest lead amongst parliamentarians, Lamont attracted around 37% of the membership vote, compared to Ken's 53%.

 

 

In addition to the leadership election, Labour was also voting on a new deputy, with my tender tyro MP, Anas Sarwar, winning out over Ian Davidon MP and Lewis Macdonald MSP with 51.10% of the vote across the college.  Here's where Anas' found his support in the party. You'll notice, in stark contrast with Johann, that Sarwar only managed to attract a modest percentage of affiliates' ballots, while very comprehensively carrying both Labour's parliamentary delegations, and ordinary members.

And amongst the three sections of the college, support for the three candidates for deputy divided as follows...

 

Source.