RICHARD LEONARD has pledged to “make arts and culture” the “visible flagship” of his radical manifesto.

Speaking at the Glasgow May Day cabaret night yesterday evening, the Scottish Labour leader said the left must defend bookshops and record shops from closure as much as post offices.

He asked: “If our movement does not develop our own cultural policy based on our own values, how on earth can we develop a cultural policy for the whole nation, let alone mount a direct challenge to the concentration of ownership, and so power, across the whole field of culture and communications, which frames the terms of our public debate and the choices we can exercise as citizens?”