IN Scottish Labour, it seems like a faction fight is never complete without a legal battle. Just months ago, Glasgow solicitor Asim Khan successfully sued his own party over the selection timetable for the Glasgow South West seat at Westminster. 

He threatened to go to court again when the party barred him from the contest — though he failed to follow through with that one.

Now, ex-Slab leader Kezia Dugdale has said she “lost the ability to cope” when the party informed her lawyers it would no longer fund her defence costs in a libel case.

She is being sued by Stuart Campbell, who runs the pro-indy Wings Over Scotland blog, for claiming in her column in the Daily Record that he had written “homophobic tweets” — a charge he denies.

Britain’s tough defamation laws mean we have become a destination for “libel tourism” — and it’s hard not to feel sympathy to anyone who feels their brunt. 

But it appears there’s more to this story than most of the write-ups have included. Before Dugdale gave her account on the Daily Record’s podcast — essential listening for anyone who follows Holyrood intrigue — the paper’s assistant editor David Clegg offered some valuable background. 

Once Campbell began proceedings, the Record prepared to defend the case, according to Clegg — but Labour insisted on taking the lead because there was “too much at risk for them.”

This account was backed up by former Record editor Murray Foote, who tweeted: “When the defamation was raised, the Record took up the fight and sent the initial legal response. Labour then told the Record to back off, this was the party’s fight.”

Labour's then general secretary Iain McNicol is said to have asked then head of compliance John Stolliday to instruct the party’s solicitors, who in turn passed the case on to lawyers in Scotland. 
Interviewed on the podcast, Dugdale credited McNicol and Stolliday, who have both since moved on to pursue new challenges, with offering unequivocal support. 

“Fast forward 18 months … and I had to find out from my solicitor that the Labour Party weren’t prepared to pay any more legal bills.

“Safe to say the one major factor that’s changed in that time is that the general secretary is no longer Iain McNicol, it’s a woman called Jennie Formby.”

That’s not how the party sees it. A spokeswoman said: “Kezia Dugdale has received significant support from the Labour Party.

“The party has a responsibility to all our members and that must mean spending our members’ fees responsibly and appropriately.

“We have to present and campaign around our message of hope and the need to rebuild Britain and that is where we believe our members wish to see their fees spent.”

It’s reported the party has already spent £94,000 on the case. So what happened? When Formby took over the top job at HQ, this would have been one of many matters gracing her in-tray.

According to a source, there was no paper trail showing how it had been decided to back the case. When the new general secretary asked two top officials who would be expected to have direct responsibility for signing off such backing, they had not even heard of the party’s role in the case.

It had, according to the source, never been raised in a minuted meeting, and nor were there any records of the stance the party had taken on its backing. Dugdale in turn disputes this version of events, and says she was given the impression that Labour would fund her costs throughout.

“Given the principles on which it was founded — equality, fairness and justice — the UK Labour Party wholeheartedly committed to paying all legal costs associated with this case from start to finish,” her spokesman told the Star.

“It is hoped the decision by Jennie Formby to break this promise is reversed in the interests of solidarity.”

Others argue that in any such legal case involving an organisation like Labour, decisions on backing would only be taken for each stage of litigation as it comes — because the chance of success will need to be reassessed.

On the Record podcast, Dugdale said she would now look to “defend myself” — quickly going on to add that this is “something I know the Daily Record have an active interest in.” 

If the paper was willing to back her from the off and has not abandoned her, why was Labour declining to fund further — and expensive — support presented as such a travesty?

The party says Dugdale’s column in the Record was always a private arrangement, and not something party officials signed off even when she was leader.

Foote, the Record’s editor at the time of the case, saw it differently.

“Every week Kezia’s column promoted Labour values and policies, for which she sacrificed her own time without a single penny of personal reward,” he tweeted, referring to the fact she donated her fee to charity.

“For the party to make the excuse that it was a private arrangement really is the most weasel of words.”

Dugdale wondered on air: “How could my party do this to me?”

Fair enough — and she can’t have been the only one to have felt this in recent years. In July 2016, Dugdale used the very same column in the Daily Record to state: “With Jeremy [Corbyn] as leader the chances of a UK Labour government in the near future are slim at best and non-existent at worst.”

In September 2017, months after Corbyn’s party confounded its critics and won the biggest increase in vote share since the second world war, Dugdale took another shot in the Record. 

She proceeded to “blame Jeremy Corbyn too for failing to use the power of his popular appeal to convince traditional Labour voters” to vote to stay in the EU.

She said she was “embarrassed by the complete paucity of my party” over Brexit. Was this in the service of Labour?

Last autumn, Dugdale announced her appearance in I’m a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here! — overshadowing the announcement of her successor the following day. 

Now after a successful Labour conference, with substance and not smears dominating the news agenda for the first time in weeks, guess who’s back.

Tactical, perhaps — but is it really strategic to kick up a fuss over party chiefs refusing to honour an unwritten pact to sign a blank cheque of members’ subs? If this is the battle that Labour’s right wing is choosing, perhaps it’s not going to win the war.

Conrad Landin is Morning Star Scotland editor. This column appears every Saturday.