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SCOTTISH Labour have minimal influence over UK Labour policy, Jeremy Corbyn has said.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with The National, the former Labour leader's comments come after Anas Sarwar claimed in his manifesto that electing his MP’s put Scotland at the “beating heart of a Labour government”.
After a sweeping General Election win for his party in Scotland last week, the Scottish Labour leader said his 37 Scottish MPs are “not going to Westminster to sit on the opposition benches, to shout, to protest, and ultimately come back with nothing”.
Sarwar added: "They are going to sit on the government benches, to sit round the table and make decisions for the people of Scotland.
But when Corbyn was asked whether he believes Scottish Labour have much influence over UK party policy, he responded: “No, I don’t think they do.
“I think Scottish Labour obviously have influence over candidate selection in Scotland because that's devolved to them. They also have influence over resources and allocation."
He (below) then said: “But in terms of overall policy, I think that the Labour Party [and Keir Starmer] have become very centralised.”
Corbyn added: “On the direction, I think they [Scottish Labour] will want to have influence.
“Whether they will succeed – I'm not really so sure.”
At the General Election, Corbyn held his seat of Islington North, where he has been MP since 1983, holding off the Labour challenge after being kicked out of the party.
He collected 24,120 votes, compared to Labour candidate Praful Nargund's 16,873, winning a majority of more than 7000.
But Corbyn also spoke of his time as Labour leader between 2015 and 2020, including the 2017 General Election where he won 3 million more votes than Keir Starmer, and the frosty reception he got from some in Scottish Labour when visiting Scotland.
Corbyn spoke of a leaked dossier in 2020 that suggested that Labour party officials opposed to his leadership worked to lose the 2017 general election – where he won 3 million more votes UK-wide than Starmer – with the hope that a bad result would help oust him.
“What I was trying to do in the 2017 election was to take the campaign out on an assertive demand around the country of the kind of social justice offer we were making – by public meetings, rallies, demonstrations And my team were pushing very hard,” he said.
“And what the leaked dossier confirms is that there were senior officials of the Labour Party that didn't want any of that and spent an awful lot of time undermining it.”
Corbyn added: “And in Scotland, there was a refusal by some of the officials in Scottish Labour to use the slogan “for the many, not the few.”
“Some of them didn't seem terribly keen on on me being in Scotland. Whereas the reception I got from the public and from some of our candidates was fine. It was wonderful and I felt very much at home there.”
Corbyn added that the “same cultural opposition” to him also existed in the Scottish Labour office.
“I just got the feeling that some of the people in Scottish Labour, not all of them, were simply interested in getting position in place for the future.
“They didn't understand the message we were putting forward.”
A Scottish labour spokesperson said: "Mr Corbyn is not a member of the Labour Party and is entitled to his own views."
Check out our full exclusive interview with Jeremy Corbyn in this week's Sunday National.
