The House Article | Brian Leishman: “We’re Miles Off Where A Labour Party Should Be”

Brian Leishman MP (Photograph by Gemma Day)

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Brian Leishman excelled in golf, a sport which celebrates individualism like few others and was previously a goalkeeper, that most specialist and lonely of football positions.

Since winning Alloa and Grangemouth for Labour, the 43-year-old is learning the ways sports and politics are similar – and the ways in which they are very different.

“Golf was amazing, and it was my passion for an awfully long time, but it’s an individual sport. I’ve got a friend back home in Scotland who describes politics as a bunch of sole traders playing a team game. I understand that… Teams that I’ve played in for football, you have a cross section of life and it’s the exact same in a political party.”

He adds: “You have got some people in a football team that when the chips are down, you can look at them and you think, you’re 100 per cent with me.”

Jonathan Reynolds, the Chief Whip, may be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at that given the number of times Leishman has rebelled. He lost the Labour whip last July, only for it to be reinstated four months later. But Leishman might contend that he is loyal to his cause – and there are more ways to win than doing as you are told.

He is warm, even jovial, a tone honed from his time teaching golf across Scotland, including to celebrities as varied as Shakira, Gerard Butler and Ryan Giggs.

He played in goal for the Hibernian and then the Cowdenbeath academies before being released in 1999, while the team was managed by future Scotland boss Craig Levein, though Leishman is clear he was “nowhere near” Levein’s first team. After he was released, he dedicated himself to his other sport. He dropped out of Stirling University at the end of six weeks there, returning to his local golf course on a Friday night. After a conversation with his boss, the club swiftly offered Leishman the opportunity to be the golf pro from the following week. He remained one for the next 23 years.

Leishman struggles to approach the topic without a heavy dose of self-deprecation. “I was alright. I mean. I was okay. I’m still trying to find a sport I’m good at.”

For now, the wait will persist, as Leishman is speed-running a political career. He first joined Labour in 2016 under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, occasionally leafleting until Christmas 2021, when at 39 he decided to first stand for office.

Leishman had what he jokingly described as his “mid-life crisis”. “I’m not into sports cars, so I said to my wife: I might run for council. She said I should do it before I’m too old, so I put my papers in.

“Looking back, it was a bit of a box tick as they had six candidates for 12 [seats]. They played it super cool, before calling back in 20 minutes and asking what ward I fancied.”

Just over a year later, he stood to be the Westminster candidate for Alloa and Grangemouth, defeating the SNP incumbent, John Nicolson.

He narrowly avoided running out of money during the campaign after he underestimated the costs of electioneering full-time. He now jokes it’s “one of” the reasons he’d be unlikely to find himself a home in 11 Downing Street.

Since being elected to Parliament, Leishman has not tried to keep his head down. He became the first MP to call for the resignation of Morgan McSweeney, helped lead the revolt over the welfare bill and has pushed back on government plans for digital ID.

Although the government has ultimately followed Leishman’s lead on most of his rebellions, in July last year he was suspended for what the whips described as “persistent breaches of party discipline”. It seems the stick didn’t work: Leishman has remained outspoken.

He is deferential to other MPs in the party, though, and loath to criticise colleagues. He is currently making plans for his friend and fellow welfare rebel Neil Duncan-Jordan’s rock band to play in his constituency in the summer. He counts some members of the SNP as allies, and regularly plays snooker with their Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, though says they never discuss politics.

On the fight against the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery, Leishman consulted Corbyn, who advised him to try to exhaust every possible political angle to get it on the national agenda.

While his views of other MPs regardless of background is considered, he is clear in his demands of party leadership.

“If you’re in leadership, if you’re around the Cabinet table, you can take the plaudits when things are good. Imagine being a secretary of state, and you implement a bit of legislation, and you’ve transformed someone’s life, like for example the Employment Rights Bill. You know what? Go home that night, crack open a beer, put your feet up, and reflect back and think that’s a job well done. That’s the good stuff. That’s leadership.

“But also you’ve then got to have the other side of that coin and say that, well, I don’t think if something isn’t living up to what I consider the Labour Party should be doing, then you’ve got to take that criticism, that’s part and parcel of being in leadership.”

Leishman’s frustration is chiefly reserved for issues of leadership – whether it be party management or errors of judgement – for example, around the latest scandal of Peter Mandelson.

“People were shocked at it – I’m not. Because let’s be honest, for the thick end of four decades, Peter Mandelson has been living in plain sight and telling everyone who he is, who he works for, what his vested interests are. People, surely, cannot be shocked and outraged at this. Well, they can be outraged, but they can’t be shocked at what happened.”

The Prime Minister… really needs to reassess his definition of what extreme left is

Similarly, Leishman’s response to the Gorton and Denton by-election defeat is not one of outcome, but of reaction to the result itself. In fact, his characterisation of Labour in comparison to the Greens and Your Party would not differ far from either Zack Polanski’s or Corbyn’s.

“We saw in Gorton and Denton, and we can see in Your Party, that there are other left-wing options for the electorate. The Labour leadership needs to appreciate that.

“The Prime Minister, if he describes what the Greens said in the campaign for Gorton and Denton as being of the ‘extreme left’, he really needs to reassess his definition of what extreme left is. What the Greens were saying about redistribution of wealth, improvement of public services – that’s basically Labour Party stuff.”

Having already had run-ins with the whips’ office, Leishman appears sanguine about the same happening again. Asked if Labour whips quite knew what they were letting themselves in for when a professional golfer from sleepy Clackmannanshire was selected, through what was otherwise a deeply factional process, Leishman pauses.

“I’ve never thought about it like that. I just want to come in, be representative of the people who put me here, and be representative of my own politics. It’s not a secret, it’s not a massive scoop for you to say I’m really not happy with the direction of the party. I don’t think it’s good enough. We’re miles off where a Labour Party should be.”

Either way, it doesn’t appear Leishman will die wondering.

“I don’t need to be emboldened, because it’s just what I’m going to do. I also look at it this way. Maybe this is a very, very black and white way of looking at it. But let’s say the next general election, whenever it would be, if I’m standing in Alloa Town Hall and the returning officer says that I haven’t won, that I’m out. I want to have a body of work I can look back on and say I’m genuinely proud.

“What’s an MP willing to sacrifice?” Leishman asks philosophically, considering his rebellions across the last two years, and the personal cost to him. “I don’t know how many times I’ve broken the whip – I’m not keeping count.

“We talked about Bromley versus Oldham earlier on, or Celtic and Aberdeen tonight. Like in football, you’ve got to take it one vote at a time.

“It’ll be interesting to see what happens next in regard to SEND,” he adds. “When we look at some of the sort of the immigration stuff that’s potentially coming down the line, I don’t agree with that. So, yeah, there’s more to come.”