How Kezia Dugdale made Mission: Impossible more difficult for herself

When Kezia Dugdale was elected Scottish Labour leader, she tweeted: ‘Mission: Impossible has a happy ending, right?’ As she steps down from the job, Dugdale is getting enough praise to suggest that her mission has a happy ending. But is that really fair?

She leaves with more Scottish Labour MPs in Westminster than she started with: impressive, given many had assumed Scottish Labour was dead for at least a generation after the SNP surge in 2015. But then again, she leaves with her party in third place at Holyrood. Her critics on the Left will argue that the party’s recovery in its Scottish seats was far more down to Jeremy Corbyn than it was to her. Corbyn’s critics still can’t quite bring themselves to accept that winning seats can be a test of whether someone is a good leader: for them, it’s winning power in government, or nothing.