Iain Gray, the newly elected Labour leader in the Scottish parliament, is so
dull he makes ditchwater look like vintage Krug. That appears to be the
consensus among Holyrood hacks. The man who would challenge Salmond for the
job of first minister is routinely referred to as “boring” and
“uncharismatic”. In an age when politics is two parts personality to one
part policy, this is a serious drawback.
Take a look at Gray’s curriculum vitae, however, and there is enough exoticism
to satisfy a troupe of transvestite belly-dancers. As a 24-year-old with a
young wife and a two-year-old child, he spent two years in war-torn
Mozambique teaching physics in Portuguese to traumatised African children.
As Oxfam’s campaigns’ director in Scotland, he jetted into Rwanda in the
aftermath of the genocide, saw the killing fields of Cambodia and turned up
in Chile in the same week as General Pinochet left office.
“The school in Mozambique was on the Limpopo river, which was the frontline in
the civil war,” he says, settling into a chair in his extended “pod” — the
perk of leadership. “You could hear the war raging at night. Sometimes the
school filled up with people fleeing the fighting. Not long after we left,
the school was overrun.”
Facing down kids with AK47s at roadblocks is not an experience many MSPs can
boast. The closest most of them come to staring death in the face is the
subsidised pie and bridie counter in the parliament canteen.
Then there is the sexual intrigue. In his Oxfam days, Gray was a close friend
of Kevin Dunion, who worked for Friends of the Earth and is now Scottish
information commissioner. Gray’s first wife, Linda Malloch, who ran the
government-sponsored See Me campaign supporting people with mental illness,
is now married to Dunion. Gray’s second wife, Gill, used to work in the
Scottish parliament for the Labour MSP Mary Mulligan. In the small world of
left-wing politics it all sounds quite incestuous. “I only see Linda or
Kevin occasionally. We get on fine now. It was all a long time ago,” he says.
Gray doesn’t have political enemies as such — nobody seems able to get that
worked up about him — but there is an inference that he is not only dull but
a dullard. He was certainly an inexperienced enterprise minister in Jack
McConnell’s government, admitting to a lack of understanding of
macro-economics. He still comes across as economically naive. He exonerates
Gordon Brown from any responsibility for the current crisis in Britain and
sees British banks as victims of America.
“I wouldn’t say it is a good thing for Gordon Brown because it makes it sound
like it’s a good thing that it has happened and it isn’t,” he opines. “I
think people will be saying: ‘Who do we want to sort it out?’ and Brown is
the right person to deal with it. He has had 10 years of unprecedented
economic growth.”
Selling Brown on his economic record to an angry and bewildered electorate
fails the Daz doorstep challenge; it simply won’t wash. Brown’s
laissez-faire attitude to debt and to banking regulation are contributory
factors to the current crisis.
“That’s not what caused the problem here,” says Gray. “What’s caused the
problem is the subprime market in the States.”
How does he account for the failure of Bradford & Bingley, Northern Rock and
HBOS? “It’s because they were exposed to that kind of lending,” he says. But
that is to ignore imprudent lending here with people being offered five
times their salary or mortgages of more than 100%. He does concede that HBOS
had “a problem with its business model” but it is not a convincing analysis.
While Gray may be no Einstein, this physics graduate from Edinburgh University
is intellectually superior to Cathy Jamieson and Andy Kerr, with whom he
competed for the leadership. He was dux of Inverness Royal Academy. Like
Alistair Darling and Tony Blair, he attended a top Edinburgh private school.
Gray usually keeps quiet about the year he spent as a scholarship boy at
George Watson’s College under a hot-housing scheme. He left after his family
moved to Inverness. He says he didn’t like George Watson’s and never fitted
in.
Perhaps his reputation for dullness is borne of caution. But there have been
times when he has been remarkably cavalier. He took a risk with the health
of his only daughter, Shelley, which he now admits was mad.
“There wasn’t just a war going on in Mozambique,” he says. “It also hadn’t
rained for two years and food was in short supply. There were a couple of
times Shelley started to get ill. Her weight dropped and her colour went.
She had a vitamin deficiency. By a miracle the pharmacy, which usually had
nothing, got a supply of vitamin supplements. I bought some and gave them to
her and she got better straight away. Looking back, it was pretty
irresponsible.”
Gray is a surprising choice to fill the kitten heels of Wendy Alexander.
Always considered Gordon Brown’s preference — a tag he says he doesn’t fully
understand — he emerged as favourite late in the day. His recognition factor
is so low as to be subterranean. In one poll only 3% of respondents said he
would make the best first minister. As the News of the World pointed out,
that is fewer than the number of people who believe Elvis is still alive.
He is the antithesis of the volatile, emotional but warm and charismatic
Alexander. The appointment of two such diametrically opposed leaders in such
a short space of time — Gray is the fifth leader of the Scottish Labour MSPs
in less than a decade — suggests that the party is unsure of the direction
in which it should head or the face it should present to the world.
This sense of panic was underlined by Gray’s decision to tear up the 2007
manifesto and start again. Margaret Curran has been given special
responsibility to develop policy. But after eight years of running the
country, the ditching of past policy smacks of expediency at the expense of
any idealism. It is impossible to tell what Labour in Scotland stands for at
present. This was reflected in their poor result in the Glasgow East
by-election.
“If Labour can’t win in Shettleston – the game is over,” wrote one
correspondent to the Daily Record newspaper recently.
Gray’s years in Africa, watching people battling to improve their lot in
hostile conditions, have made him an optimist, a handy sentiment given
Labour’s current standing in the polls. He continues to maintain that Labour
has a chance of winning the forthcoming Glenrothes by-election. “Of course
we can win it,” he says. “We have a very good candidate.”
He is candid as to why Labour lost the Holyrood election. “We became a bit too
managerial,” he says. “When you do that, you start talking in a way that
doesn’t resonate with people. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to people and
sometimes it just pisses them off.”
The lack of a manifesto does, however, give the pack-a-day smoker Gray
breathing space and allows him to be non-committal on the two big topics
facing the parliament: the SNP’s proposals for a referendum on independence
and the replacement of the council tax with a local income tax.
“The challenge that Wendy made to Alex Salmond to deal with the referendum
question was right,” says Gray in a revisionist approach to the debacle that
badly wounded Alexander. “It is a destabilising influence in Scotland’s
economic prospects. Over the summer a couple of big companies I’ve visited
have said it is an issue for them in terms of investment decisions.”
So he would back a referendum? “No,” he says. “Why would I?” Because you just
said Wendy Alexander’s approach to the referendum was right.
“But Salmond isn’t going to do it,” says Gray. “He’s isn’t going to bring
forward a referendum bill until 2010. To my mind both the question and the
timing are rigged, not to suit Scotland’s interests but to suit the SNP’s
interests, therefore we wouldn’t support it.”
So he wouldn’t support a referendum under any circumstances? “If Salmond
brings forward a referendum proposal where it was a fair question, I would
look at it but I’m not calling on him to do it. That ship has sailed.”
But the referendum ship is still very firmly in the harbour and, like the
Marie Celeste, may come back to haunt Labour. What comfort and promise can
he give the companies which expressed their concerns to him over the summer?
“They continue to worry about it. But that’s Alex Salmond’s fault, not
mine,” he says.
Gray is opposed to Salmond’s proposal to replace the council tax with a local
income tax but has yet to work out his own alternative. “We don’t have our
own proposals,” he says candidly. “We went into the 2007 election with a
proposal to try and make the council tax fairer and it didn’t add up.
Central to our new manifesto is a properly worked out suggestion for how we
make the council tax fairer.”
He is prepared to consider the idea of a land-value tax. It’s a policy
proposed by the Green party that would hammer the Scottish lairds and could
have serious repercussions for farmers and the rural economy.
“We should be open-minded about these things,” he says. “As a starting
principle it should be a property-based tax. I’ve spoken to the Greens about
their proposal for a property tax and a land-value tax. I’m not sure how
well thought-out their proposal is but we should look at it. Maybe it would
be a combination of the two.”
A land-value tax may force big landowners to sell swaths of land, possibly at
knock-down prices, which the government could then buy for affordable
housing. “It might have these kinds of advantages,” says Gray. “That’s why
we should look at it. I don’t know how practical it is.”
He is not prepared to give any further details of a putative scheme. “I’ve
always resisted being asked to do that immediately on the back of a fag
packet,” he says. “We made that mistake once before.”
So when will the electorate see Gray’s new policies? “I’m not going to set a
timetable. The task Margaret has is to develop a policy programme towards
2011.”
A potential three-year policy gap combined with a personality deficit should
be a huge handicap for Gray. In addition he has both his badly bruised
predecessors sitting behind him in the parliament. But Gray seems
comfortable in his skin. His scientific training gives him a concrete
approach to problem-solving. It sometimes seems he lacks the imagination for
paranoia.
There is, however, no lack of contradictions in his personality. A charity
worker for the developing world and supporter of the left-wing alternative
economic strategy who became enterprise minister, he learned his politics at
the knee of his trade-unionist grandfather. A left-winger, he is now in
favour of replacing Trident. A smoker and divorced father, he credits the
United Free Church as a formative influence.
“My grandfather wasn’t active in politics but he was very Labour,” he says.
“He loathed Margaret Thatcher. A lot of my politics come from him and also
from my church upbringing, which was about community and being involved.”
Musically, his tastes run to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. He likes the novels
of Sara Paretsky and Ian Rankin. “I read a lot of political biography.” Did
he read the Cherie Blair autobiography? “No,” he says. “There is a line that
I draw.”
As I pack up to leave I ask Gray to give me five interesting and unknown facts
about himself to dispel his boring image.
“I speak Portuguese although it’s very rusty,” he says. “I grow bonsai trees.”
There is a silence and his press officer throws in the observation that Gray
is a blue belt in karate. “It’s a green belt actually,” says Gray. “That’s
three.” The PR comes up with the observation that Gray’s holiday job as a
student was as a bus conductor. “That’s four,” says Gray. “We need one more.”
In the silence you can hear the sound of spatulas scraping barrel bottoms.
“There must be something else,” says Gray. It’s like naming five famous
Belgians. We all think hard. I suggest he thinks of the most mischievous
thing he’s ever done. “No there’s nothing,” he jokes. “I’ve always been
perfect. Smoking is the extent of my badness.” The seconds tick on.
“The season ticket to Easter Road?” suggests the press officer, lamely.
Finally Gray comes up with the fact that he likes the musician Moby. We all
breathe a sigh of relief. You see, he’s not a dull man at all.
