Scottish Labour’s conference begins tomorrow and, unless Anas Sarwar secures peace in Ukraine, its biggest story has already happened.
 
Ahead of the conference, the party has ditched the rose as its emblem. Scottish Labour will instead sport a thistle in muted purple and red. The rose, the national flower of England, has long raised hackles in Scotland and, as far back as 2012, then Labour MP Tom Harris was pondering whether it should be changed.
 
A change in political aesthetics is wrought with risk. It can more expose what the party is trying to escape than show where it hopes to go. Scottish Labour is trying to escape both its ‘branch office’ reputation and its persistent third place in polls. The thistle, distinctly Scottish, seeks to tackle the former to improve the latter.
 
The response has been churlish; though Scotland’s other parties may have room to be smug. The Scottish Conservatives, which accused Labour of “wasting time” on their logo, were last distracted by the need for a new logo in 2012. The SNP’s loop logo, which incorporates the saltire while evoking a thistle, has displayed remarkable longevity, serving its party since 1960.
 
Labour, of all UK parties, knows the power of a re-brand. The rose itself was adopted by Neil Kinnock in 1986. The party’s red flag was too bolshy and the torch, the central element of its earlier logo, had been nabbed by the Tories. The rose symbolised a new direction, which Tony Blair would continue when he decked his first party conference in centrist pistachio.
 
It is ironic that Sarwar, a moderate and pragmatist, should seek to ditch the rose of Labour modernisation. Scottish Labour’s corporate identity is diverging just as its Scottish and UK leaderships agree on a moderate, patriotic approach. The change is, though, also contingent: Sarwar is displaying some of the pragmatism that helped Labour out of its wilderness years.
 
But will it help Scottish Labour?
 
Other parties have had their fun and the circus has probably already moved on. The logo’s chief value is perhaps as a statement of intent to those of us who were paying attention anyway. Its main story may have been had already, but the policy and work concentrated in Labour’s conference is far more likely to impact the party’s fortunes than is its logo.