The challenge for Scottish Labour

To say that the weekend has not been the best for the Scottish Labour Party would be an understatement, to put it mildly! Over the next few weeks, I certainly intend to make a number of contributions to the debate about how the Scottish Labour rebuilds itself after last year's loss, and the events since then. A couple of things seem to me be pretty clear, however - firstly, there does need to be a debate, and that means there needs to be an election so that the issues and choices can be aired - Labour has nothing to fear from an open debate, and it will be good for Scottish politics to have that debate; and secondly, that debate needs to include a fundamental analysis of where we stand in Scotland. After all, Labour's support in the Scottish Parliament election in 2007 only dropped slightly from 2003 - the reason the SNP did well was as much due to the decline of other parties as to its own performance. In my mind, the real question is what are the reasons for the longer term trend of declining support, and how we tackle that.