Dear Jeremy, welcome to Scotland...

From my Daily Record column

Dear Jeremy,

Welcome to Stornoway where you start your tour of Scottish marginal seats next week.

Regretfully, I can’t accompany you to the Western Isles, though having just returned from the place I call home I can report your arrival is eagerly anticipated.

However, a word of caution. When you fly in next Wednesday don’t fall for the illusion of being on the periphery of British politics. The Isle of Lewis is at the very nexus of western politics.

Let me remind you how the dreaded DUP, which props up your nemesis in office, owe much of their philosophical roots to these islands.

When the late Rev Ian Paisley was setting up his fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster it was to the churches of Lewis he came for ideas. The DUP is no more than the political wing of the Paisleyite church. 

Then remember, as we do daily, how Donald Trump’s mother hails from the village of Tong, just across the bay from the airport you’ll set down at. Do you begin to see how the Hebrides could be at the root of some of an Islington MP’s waking nightmares?

So, tread carefully, though not with any fear because you can learn as much from the islanders as they can from you.

That sense of a community pulling together, which you saw in your own constituency after the dreadful June terror attack on Finsbury Park mosque, is, in the Western Isles, pretty much as constant as the wind.

Tapping into that energy of belonging, of caring and sharing so evident in these small communities is as important and elusive an element in changing lives across the UK as capturing the wind is for renewable energy.

Oh, a word on renewables. The Tories in their manifesto pledged a special islands renewables tariff crucial to a big interconnecter cable project to feed wind power to the mainland.   

You’ll have to go one further and explain how the project would be paid for by the £250 billion National Transformation Fund Labour promised in that excellent election manifesto.

The manifesto made a difference, as you undoubtedly did in Scotland. The island seat, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, is now within 1,000 votes of going Labour as are many of the other marginals you’ll visit.

To win them you have to persuade SNP voters to switch, just as you must convince Tory voters in parts of England to back Labour. 

It’s no small task, but the issues that really matter to people - low wages, a proper health service, a future for their kids - are the same across the UK. There’s nothing there that division - in Labour, in Britain or from Europe - would solve.

Despite a good result you lost the general election to a disastrous Tory campaign. Talking to the faithful is not going to get Labour over the line. You’ll have to reach out.      

Persuasion, of course, takes leadership. On the question of the age you are going to have to show some.

For a generation the EU transformed Scotland’s islands with funding to match the challenges of living on the edge.

You have to provide a solid alternative to the Tory cabinet’s “cunning plans” of Brexit policymaking by Blackadder script.

You’re going to have to make a call on Brexit, places like Lewis need you to make it the right one.

So, far from being on the edge these islands are central your mission to transform Britain and to your own personal journey.

The Lewis beaches are as good a place as any to reflect on this. Persuade the islands that Labour is a better way, and you are on the road to power.

Change things here Jeremy, and you will have changed the world. 

Yours, comrade Crichton.

  

PS - Don’t wait until you get there to buy a Harris Tweed jacket. Arrive in one, and take your sunglasses. Like politics, the islands can be cold one minute and hot the next. Siuthad a bhalaich, show ‘em you’ve got the island style.