Ms Dugdale – who was elected leader in August – also urged the party to “learn the mistakes” of Scottish Labour.
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It was also said that colleagues north and south of the border were annoyed by the lack of consultation before the joint statement of intent was made by the Scottish leader with Jeremy Corbyn, her United Kingdom counterpart on Monday.
The leader of Scottish Labour has set our her plans to make her party “autonomous” from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.
Under her plans, Scottish Labour will have responsibility over policymaking, party membership and the management of local constituency parties across Scotland, while co-operation will take place with the United Kingdom party on matters such as staffing and finance.
Scottish Labour’s structural change, in contrast, is more of a break with the past.
She told Sky’s Murnaghan programme that essential changes had to be made to how the party was run to regain the trust of the Scottish people.
Speaking before addressing the Parliamentary Labour Party in the House of Commons, Ms Dugdale said: “I need to be able to set the Scottish Labour Party on a different course, to take policy decisions, to use the new wealth and the powers that are coming to the Scottish Parliament to put them into effect”. I think that is something that voters in Scotland had always been crying out for.
Debate over the position of the party in Scotland has raged since last year’s independence referendum, after which former leader Johann Lamont resigned blasting the London leadership for treating it like a “branch office”.
“That’s what people the length and breadth of the country want to see”.
“This is about maintaining the UK Labour Party”.
“Under Kezia’s leadership Scottish Labour is on the road to recovery, and establishing their own identifiable brand is an important part of that journey”. I want this major package of reforms to kick start reform across the UK Labour Party.
Corbyn, who won by a landslide leadership victory vote just over a month ago, told The Sunday Times newspaper that he is aiming to create a “federal” party in Scotland.
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Pushing through changes to candidate selection quickly would allow her to pursue another priority, which is to widen the net for the recruitment of Scottish Labour politicians, looking beyond the traditional party structures for supporters with different professional and social backgrounds, much as the Scottish National party has done so successfully of late. “If you take Trident as the obvious example, say we voted at our conference against renewal, our one Scottish Labour MP is already anti-Trident and still a member of the shadow cabinet”.
