John Smith

Can I just say on that, though, when he harked back to 1986, I wrote this down.

He spoke about Neil Kinnock and John Smith, and he said, "It was a vibrant time."

It was an awful time to be on the left.

For the labor movement.

But

if John Smith hadn't died and therefore prompting a leadership election, which was not an election actually, but a... leadership appointment of Tony Blair, John Smith would have won.

That Conservative government was deeply unpopular.

Probably, but we'll never know.

take

your point because Tony Blair did bring energy.

Whatever John Smith might have

done or whatever, but we know what Blair did and he went on to win the election in 1997 here.

And I mean, it might not be Michael Mara's hunt in the long run, but Labour's lost its bench in a massive way.

When you think even just like 30 years ago, or let's say 35 years ago, and you had Gordon Brown, you had Donald Dewar, John Smith, Like big, big names.

Like Scotland was the engine of Labour.

And

Yeah, it was Foote and then Neil Kinnock.

And then briefly John Smith, who died of a heart attack before contesting an election.

And then Tony Blair.

Then Tony Blair,

To an extent, you saw it with the philosophy of New Labour.

You had this traditional, very socialist-valued Labour Party under John Smith and Neil Kinnock, and then transitions to this more centrist-focused under Tony Blair.

South Africa very much caught the after effects of that in the 90s when we entered our democracy.

Some of the hard, almost deeply leftist embedded policies that the ANC represented as a movement changed when they got into government.

I don't see why that should be a barrier.

You think of an arrangement like Gordon Brown stepping up for John Smith in the early 90s.

I was surprised to not see that happen and surprised that they went for Griffiths instead.

I'm not doubting that he's able, but it just seems that Kemi Badenoch plus Claire Coutinho has a feel of sort of new next generation, something potentially politically quite exciting, but she's taking a different choice.