Monica Lennon, the Glasgow region MSP and the only woman standing for the Scottish Labour leadership, posted on Sunday 2 August that "This 'contest' reeks of misogyny and male entitlement"1. She called the party a "private members' club" and said that "men expect a coronation or a ballot without women". She was reported the same day to be finding it difficult to line up the endorsements required to get her name in front of members2. She published the charge on the eve of nominations formally opening, which they did the following day, 3 August.
The sequence shapes how the charge reads. Lennon made it after the reports of her difficulty rather than before, and the deadline she has to meet falls on Monday 17 August at ten in the morning.
A complaint against a party's internal machinery is hard to test from outside, because endorsements are given privately and nothing is published until the returning officer closes the window. Only the outcome can be observed: either three names go to the members or two do, and the second version produces an all-male ballot in a contest whose winner will speak for the party through the next Holyrood term.
Should Lennon clear the bar, she would lead a group selected under the culture she has just described in public, which is an awkward starting position however the vote in September goes. Should she miss it, the winner takes office having beaten one opponent while the loudest critic of the process never appeared on the paper.
