Where is Scottish Labour going?

Embarrassing. Historic. Theoretically unusual. Many things passed through the minds of Labour supporters in Scotland during the parliamentary elections in May. The Scottish National Party (SNP) won over the country, long a bastion of support for Labour. Under the Scots’ proportional representation (PR) system, the nationalists had taken 16 seats from them. The voting system, which is designed to reflect voting percentages better than first-past-the-post, did exactly that, and in doing so allowed the SNP to form the first ever majority government in Scotland.

But what went wrong for Labour? I sit with Ken Macintosh, the MSP for Eastwood now hoping to win the leadership of Scottish Labour after the position of the incumbent leader, Iain Gray, became almost completely untenable after the defeat in May. Macintosh, a former journalist who has served on the back-benches at Holyrood since 1999 and secured the second-largest majority in Scotland at the last election, made the news recently when his party's UK leader Ed Miliband proved unable to name him in a television interview — despite Macintosh being regarded in Scotland as a front-runner for the leadership.

The problem, Macintosh says, was that by the time of the May election it was too late to convince Scottish voters of Labour's potential. Indeed, such a disappointing result — a seven-seat loss overall —shows a distinct lack of faith in the party to which the Scots have entrusted their governance for almost a decade. This can be attributed in part to complacency on the part of Labour, but Macintosh also credits astute maneuvering by the SNP. In government, he notes, the nationalists managed to move into Labour's policy heartland, delivering a vital blow to the latter's political identity.

He now believes that in order to correct these mistakes a few key movements need to take place within the party's structure. "We need people to know that we want to build a better Scotland," he says, "and we'll need to reform party structure and improve relations within the party." He goes on to explain that in the 2007 election, many in the Labour party failed to accept their two-seat loss to the SNP. The loss, he says, left then-leader Gray "hamstrung". Four years later, in May, Mr Gray retained his East Lothian seat by 151 votes — but a confident party leader should not need to see votes being recounted in his own constituency.

Under his leadership, Macintosh says he would want to see the party become 'Scotland's Labour party', rather than a peripheral entity of UK Labour. "The SNP portrayed us as a London party," he laments, "and while the SNP used devolution to get more power, we use it to make things better for Scotland."

Public sector spending cuts from the Westminster government certainly worked in the SNP's favour in May: Scots were frightened about belt-tightening spending north of the border. In addition, Macintosh says that the Liberal Democrats "really broke a promise" at Westminster, and that many in Scotland were vigorously against their coalition with the Conservatives — particularly in the Highland regions where the Lib Dems have their Scottish power-base.

Within the context of public sector spending, university tuition fees have become one of the core issues in UK politics over the last year. In Scotland, fees continue to rocket for Rest-of-UK students, in line with the drastically higher fees now being charged by English universities. Mr Macintosh, currently the shadow education secretary at Holyrood, derides decisions by Scottish universities to charge up to £9,000 per year in RUK fees as "fundamentally unfair", and a move which could ultimately prove "fatal" to the SNP if higher education in Scotland becomes heavily marketised. The SNP only "added insult to injury" with their decision to deregulate fees, he claims.

He may have a point. If Labour position themselves carefully on the issue of higher education, they may stand to win significant support at the next election from those angry at RUK fees in Scotland, particularly students. Point-scoring against the SNP may prove to be an ungraceful but effective way for Labour to claw back support at Holyrood.

But the interaction between Scottish Labour and the UK party will also bear close inspection. Tom Harris, a Scottish MP, has declared his candidacy for the leadership, subject to the results of a rules review by Jim Murphy and Sarah Boyack which could see major reforms to the party structure designed, in part, to make it a more independent political entity for Scotland.

Labour have continued to defend their stance against Scottish independence, favouring a more collegial relationship between Holyrood and Westminster. Macintosh suggests, for example, that taxes can be better managed from London across the UK. But he refutes claims that these positions may deter Scottish nationalists from defecting to Labour. "Our supporters are just as Scottish as the nationalists," he insists, but while this is a clever soundbite there remain clear doubts among pundits and the public about Labour's ability to overturn an SNP majority by the next election.

It is to be expected for a politician, especially one running for his party's leadership, to seem optimistic about his party's electoral chances. In order for a battered and bruised political party to gain momentum and have a reasonable shot at reclaiming seats, its leader must inspire both the party faithful and the electorate. Under a proportional representation system like that used in Scotland, public sentiment on voting day counts for everything as seats almost direct correlate to electoral percentages. The next Labour leader at Holyrood must take advantage of popular policies if Labour are to make any kind of positive progression. The party shares fundamental centre-left ideals with the SNP, including similar positions on law, healthcare and education. If there is to be any hope for them to reclaim their traditional safe-haven north of the border, the party will need to engage more actively with Scottish voters on those issues where the SNP have assumed dominance.