Labour should stop indulging its Scottish party and broker a progressive alliance with the SNP

Labour could not have played its cards worse when it comes to Scotland. Years of neglect and complacency were accelerated by the decision to line up with the Tories in the 2014 independence referendum. This was the final straw. The party suddenly and dramatically saw its vote fall off the cliff. Labour's working-class base had a new home to go to - the Scottish National Party. By pitching independence against social justice Labour has made a terrible mistake.

In one sense what the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) does is up to them. But a small and diminishing tail is wagging the UK Labour dog when it comes to talking to the SNP. It can’t go on.

The argument trotted out by Labour in Scotland for decades was that the only way to stop the Tories and get a more progressive society was by voting Labour. Thirteen years of New Labour tested the second half of that offer almost to destruction. Nowhere near enough progress was made and by 2010 the Tories were back – thus fatally undermining the first half of the promise.

Exactly what the difference is in principle between UK nationalism and Scottish nationalism is beyond me. How can support for one patriotism trump another? And independence for Scotland was never about cultural nationalism but democratic nationalism – the right and ability to control your country. When you’ve decided that its impossible to control your country, to make it socially just, while it is tied to whims of the Mail, Murdoch and now May – then the step to independence is a but a small one. Add in Brexit and the prospect of a return to Europe – then what exactly is not to like? For many in Scotland independence and social justice now go hand in hand.

Now on the wrong side of not just the SNP but a myriad of civil society groups who carry the torch of hope in their country, the SLP looks like a rump of angry people who demand that the UK Party must never speak to the SNP. No surrender indeed! Meanwhile they look set to lose every council they run in May - not least Glasgow – with the SNP itching to open the books up on decades of council contracts. At the moment the SLP is fighting it out with the Greens for who is fourth in the polls. Having painted themselves into a corner, they stand holding the brush – furious with everyone who looks on.

For as long as Scotland is part of the union, it is manifestly obvious that Labour in Westminster must talk to the SNP. To believe Labour can revive from its dire polling position, boundary changes, Brexit splits and ever hope to be in government given the loss of its Scottish base stretches the imagination to breaking point.

Now there are two arguments spat back when you suggest this. The first is that the SNP politicians aren’t progressive, so we shouldn’t deal with them. The evidence on that is flimsy to say the least. Of course the SNP can do more - and needs to - on issues of public service delivery. It is handy having the excuse of being tethered to London – "if only we were free".  But that can’t be a block on talks that can defeat the Tories – who the SNP have vowed never to work with. Anyway, Labour should be looking to strip away the SNP excuses for any failure – not reinforce them by denying the only route to taking the Tories out. A progressive alliance committed to proportional representation would, at a stroke, end the prospect of Tory majority rule.

The second objection is that fear of the SNP frightens the English horses. We all remember the posters of Ed Miliband in the pocket of Alex Salmond at the last election. Yes it’s a problem – but it’s not going to go away whether we talk to the SNP or not. Last time Labour dealt with it by saying they would never go into government with the SNP. Well, that worked. Voters didn’t believe it and it shed even more votes north of the border.

Labour has no option but to talk to the SNP as part of the now much vaunted progressive alliance. Many in the SNP want to talk to Labour, and the other progressive parties, as SNP MPs Tommy Sheppard and Anne McLaughlin argue in a new pamphlet, The Progressive Alliance: why the SNP needs it.

The SLP should calm down and have a deep think about re-orientating itself – being principally a pro-social justice party that is ambivalent about independence.

If I had a vote in Scotland, I would vote to take a chance and determine my nation's fate, rather than have it settled by the Tory Prime Minister Theresa May in a context set by Rupert Murdoch, the Daily Mail and the demands of the City of London. I would hope for a return to Europe. Looking from the outside, I want Scotland to be as successfully left wing as it can possibly be. Whether in or out the UK, we need a story of success.

If the SLP don't want to wake up and smell the coffee, then fine. But why should they be allowed to take everyone down with them? Labour and the SNP should talk about devolution, proportional representation, fighting bad Brexit and everything that by working together could make peoples lives better. Anything less is indulgence.

By Neal Lawson in The New Statesman

If The Yolk Sticks

 

 

                                          Reposted from  Lallands Peat Worrier.

 

 

If the yolk sticks.

 

 

You would be hard pushed to invent a worse story for Jim Murphy and his Scottish and UK Labour colleagues, every which way you look at it. The Eds are anxious to establish their fiscal probity. They will never satisfy the baying hounds of the Tory press, but doughty little fiends that they are, they are desperate to show that they can "responsibly" hack away at the British state with the best of them. 

The usual suspects are itching for any opportunity or pretext to question Miliband's commitment to the deficit-frame of "fiscal probity". But the Labour leader held the line, with a cauld kale offering of cuts, interspersed with a few simple, positive, constructive ideas. A mean repast it may be, but compared to the ragged, personalised, unstrategic mess that is the Tory base campaign, you can rattle off a few clear and cogent Labour proposals on one hand. For voters of the left, much of this is robbed of its substance and vitality by the overarching commitment to the deficit fetish economics which Ed Balls has imbibed -- but there it is. Choices made. Lines drawn.

Mr Murphy's task is even trickier. He has deemed it expedient to tack to the left to restore Scottish Labour's ailing fortunes, keen to pin the SNP as careless cutters in contrast with his gloss on Labour economic plans as an "end to austerity". Simultaneously, Scottish Jim for Scotland has taken Scottish Henry McLeish's Scottish advice that Scottish Labour should embrace Scottish patriotism. He has also been struggling to cast off the acrylic uniform of the party's "branch manager", run up by tricoteuse and Murphy oustee, Johann Lamont, and to establish himself as the Heid Neep of Scottish Labour's warring vegetable rack of parliamentarians, divided by their jealousies, ambitions and contempts. 

Labour is onto two losing games here. If you want a chill hearted bastard to "balance the books", why vote Labour? Why go for the bloodless alternative? Why not back blue and get the real thing? Similarly, if you are the kind of voter animated by the idea of your representatives "standing up for Scotland", why back Labour over the SNP? Cram as many references to Scotland into your Twitter profile as you like, apply a patriotic gatling gun to your election literature - you are always going to be facing a Scottish National Party whose sole fealty is to the voters north of the border, without inconvenient colleagues with different and legitimate and incompatible political agendas in the rest of the country.

On austerity and the narrow Scottish interest -- it is a battle you can't win.  If Labour aspire to remain a - or the - national UK party, I'd have thought they'd be best to push back against this limited "patriotic" agenda, rather than embracing it. Which is a long-winded way of saying: both of these -- it seems to me -- are losing games for Scottish Labour to play. But poor Jim finds himself locked into, or has chosen to play, both hands. Cue broken eggs.

Today's "slapdown" by Labour's shadow business spokesman, Chuka Umunna, and Ed Balls, undermines just about everything that Jim Murphy has been agitating so antically to promote: Labour as an anti austerity alternative, his own office as robust, independent, "patriotic", in charge of the Scottish contingent in Westminster, paying the piper and calling the tune. But Chuka was having none of that, offering up this suspiciously quotable demolition of Mr Murphy's position to Andrew Neill this lunchtime. Gey generous it was of him too:

"The leader of the Scottish Labour Party will not be in charge of the UK budget. The leader of our country, our next prime minister, Ed Miliband, will be in charge of the UK budget and he has just answered the question, when that was put to him - will there be any cuts over the course of this parliament not just in the first financial year, but in the following financial years?  And he was absolutely clear - there will be the need for further consolidation and cuts throughout the rest of the parliament."

This doesn't even leave Mr Murphy the wriggle room to be a critical friend of the UK leadership, pursuing different priorities from within the UK Labour Party. If you want to give the Labour party the heart and stomach to pursue different priorities -- there is clearly no point backing Jim. Even his own senior colleagues apparently see him as an irrelevance, and do not have the good grace to conceal their indifference to his opinion from the public. 

Today's clash also helps to marginalise impressions of Mr Murphy's control over his own Westminster parliamentarians.  In principle, at least, Jim heads up the whole contingent of Scottish representatives -- but the Eds apparently regard his colleagues as their worker bees, to troop biddably through the lobbies in Westminster without reference to the manic pterodactyl (Alex Massie™). It is the old, unedited hubris. But it diminishes Jim to a cypher, to do as telt, again. Either the Scottish Labour leader a) misunderstood the nature of his UK colleagues' plans, or b) dissembled about it none too subtly, but whether a) or b) is the case, his point of view is dismissed as irrelevant. 

If Murphy cuts up rough, he gives the Tory press an enviable opportunity to chuck muck at Ed Miliband. If he doesn't, and keeps his tongue in his head, he looks craven, disingenuous, calculating, and ineffective. A fine day at the office, all around. Tonight, the frittatas are on Jim.

Red Sails At Sunset, Compass faulty, Navigator AWOL

 

 

Watching the conference of The Labour Party In Scotland - or 'The Scottish Labour Party/Scottish Labour' - whatever they'd prefer to call it, two things came to mind. It was overwhelmingly sad and overwhelmingly missing the bleeding point.

Overwhelmingly sad because it was a fairly small venue barely more than half full and because so many people in the audience looked as if they'd spent the night before in a serious bevvy session and had been dragged out of bed to go somewhere they really didn't want to be. I can understand that. With the latest in a long line of disastrous polling results staring them in the face so close to an election - even though, yes, yes, yes, the only result that matters is the result on election day - but as I said, with poll results like that they have little to be cheerful about. There's a mountain ahead and someone's just mentioned no-one thought to pack the hiking boots or the Bovril. And its cold. And raining. Hard.

Overwhelmingly sad because despite the evidence staring them in the face for the last seven years of an SNP Government in Scotland, despite two elections in that time when their vote share first declined, then crashed, despite that shocking crash being blindingly reinforced over the two years of campaigning in the referendum, they truly don't seem to get what's happened to them. It's like they've been decapitated but the head just keeps on talking, not realising it's disconnected and those legs aren't taking them anywhere anymore. Jim Murphy, their new leader, addressed his first conference in that familiar quiet, serious tone that seems to be the only one he has these days. To be honest as I listened I zoned out much of the 'poverty background/ man of the people/why I understand what is needed/ pearls before swine' speech filling and was transported back to sitting in the pews of my childhood Sunday Kirk, sermons droning interminably on with little for me to engage with, to catch my attention and keep it, Nothing to enthuse me. Nothing memorable, just the same as last week and predictably just what next week was going to be like as well. No wonder I jumped ship once I was told I was old enough to make a choice about attending for myself.

Overwhelmingly sad because there was no sense of responsibility for this. No accountability taken for leading supporters straight into a foreseeable, avoidable, catastrophe, for taking Scotland's vote for granted for forty years. No apology for that sense of entitlement, either here or down in Westminster , for betrayal of the fundamental principals of the Labour Party's existence, for abandonment of people's hopes and aspirations of a fairer society for the pursuit of power and influence, for scandal, sleaze and corruption. No reflection, no recognition and absolutely no apology. Only an underlying sense of desperation about 'How do we get back?' It's a good job the stage was bare, so much is there to sweep under the Labour carpet.

In a pre-conference interview Jim Murphy was asked if, as a Tory ex-Prime Minister had said, Labour should rule out a coalition with the SNP to gain power at Westminster. He responded dismissively that "We don't need to be told how to run Scotland." There it was yet again. All those feckin attitudes that have led to this point. You're not there to 'run' us you absolute twit. You're there to serve us. SERVE. US FIRST. US ONLY.

Overwhelmingly sad. After all this you just won't or can't see that Scotland has changed. The labour party is going to become insignificant. We're not going to lie down and let this happen to us anymore. Not by you, not by the Tories and not even by the SNP. If you won't represent us honestly then we will reject you. We will abandon you. We will not trust you and we absolutely will not vote for you.

Scotland understands what Labour should be. We understand its roots absolutely. We understand what it's values should be. The problem is that we don't believe that's what you or it stands for any more.

You have to find those lost principles, that missing integrity. You are in charge of a ship that has lost most of its passengers and most of its crew. You stand on the bridge and order a tweak here and there, a slight turn of speed and an adjustment in direction of a compass point or two to port . You need to grab the rudder and yank it around and you better set full steam ahead while you're at it. The lifejackets have been issued and people have abandoned ship. Shouting "Don't Panic! Don't Panic!" isn't going to work Cpl Murhy.

 

And so to Capain Mainwaring - sorry - Mr Miliband.


So much of the same from him. A professional speech by a professional politician. But no fire, no inspiration. No sense of belief. No clue. Yes, he spoke more of heritage and principles, of social justice and working families but without the conviction he actually held any of those principles at heart himself. He spoke like he knew he's stuffed. {"Let's not mention the SNP. Let's just make it about us and the Tories."} And worryingly too no recognition of the problem that 'Scottish" Labour faces. How do you square the circle of the clear difference between Scotland and England by voting for Labour. It's not enough to say that 'A vote for the SNP is a vote for the Tories'.

 A} It's not true.

And

 B} In case you missed the polls - We don't believe it

NOW.

Setting aside all the problems of  principle, integrity and conviction and lifeboats all at sea, lets talk about the blooming obvious when it comes to getting elected as Scotland's representatives.

How do you square getting working class Scotland voting for you when you have to win a majority of middle class voters in England at the same time, especially with Ukip pushing working class votes to the right too? If Scotland did vote for you how would our voice be heard? How much would Scotland's weight carry within the national party?

{Although it's the bleeding obvious don't expect any BBC interviewer to ask the question.}

The bleeding obvious fundamental of this election is that it's not going to be won in the centre ground of politics. In Scotland it's about the left but - and here's the rub of the matter - in England it's about the right.  Over the last thirty years English politics has shifted to the right considerably more than Scots politics and to get elected any party HAS to win a majority in England. It just will not work if that's not the case. That's why no matter how we have voted our voice doesn't get heard. Scots voters are looking at Labour and finding they don't believe a left-of-centre Scots MP contingent within the wider UK party makes a difference when UK Labour are chasing right leaning voters.

UNLESS:

That left-of-centre vote is from SNP MP's completely independent of Labour Central Party, completely and solely focussed on Scotland's interests.

OOOH. AND:

 if those independents are within the context of a hung parliament at the election......

Pass the porage please.

Pole-axed?

So - some polls from across Scottish Labour's voting heartland have landed making it look even more of a disaster for them than previously could have been imagined. Labour's worst nightmare has just been painted clear, bright and in their face. It reinforces results that have been becoming common over the last few months but back then small poll size and large polling areas could be easily denied and derided without a problem. Now there can be no denying the scale of the disaster that is potentially facing them. Potentially, because these are only polls and only potentially because there are still almost 100 days for things to change.

I doubt if anyone, beyond the most fervent Nationalist, could have believed such a result could ever be possible. The polls seemed too good to be true to chance even half believing in them but now even the academic Professor John Curtice, polling guru of last years referendum, has been stating far and wide that these polls reflect a shift that is real. It truly is a political "wake up and smell the coffee" moment if ever there was one. It puts the "VOW PLUS" theatre of a couple of days ago into just a wee bit more of perspective; a calculated response to a nasty wee smell in the air perhaps. Maybe they thought something a bit whiffy was coming but I doubt they smelt a rotting corpse.

It's galvanised our politics here in Scotland, replete with possibility or penalty for all concerned. Across 16 mainly safe constituencies polls indicate that the SNP could take 15 of them with votes swinging an average of 25%.  With a swing of that magnitude in the elections Labour's Scottish representation in Westminster could drop from being 40 plus to just 5 or 6 and could leave UK Labour short of an outright majority in Government. Suddenly the SNP's forecast of a labour Govt needing their support and having to give concessions by delivering an entirely more comprehensive version of THE VOW than a unionist party would like seems a real possibility.

The battle is on. Labour will continue to push 'Vote SNP get Tory' and 'Vote Labour get VOW PLUS' bollocks in Scotland but they will have to fight this as a second front and tellingly will have to fight it without the kind of UK cash and manpower support brought to bear during the referendum. Outside the Scottish sideshow, in the rest of the UK, the argument will be largely about the EU. You could reasonably think austerity would top the agenda but the truth is there is little difference between the Westminster two on austerity. Sure the Conservatives are looking to claim Labour will raise the deficit with uncosted policies, but Labour are keen to show themselves as strong on the economy by denying that they will tax and spend and also to portray themselves as defenders of that very NHS that 'Better Together' told us was safe  'only within' the UK.

Here it appears that Labour's decades long complacency in taking Scotland for granted has come viciously home to roost. Across the 1990's they moved away from representing the interests of the working class and its now toxic association with trades union power to chase the increasingly affluent and right of centre voters of middle class England in recognition that those were the votes needed to carry a majority there and that majority in England was a secure hand on power. This meant that the concerns of mainly working class Scotland were left unaddressed. Coming as it did on the heels of several terms of Thatcherite Tory ideology which had been disproportionately destructive to Scotland's manufacturing industry with its equally traditional high levels of trades union membership. The failure of Labour subsequently to redress the damage or to listen to the electorate here left the voters in Scotland under no illusion that the Labour Party in Scotland has focus primarily on Westminster and English votes. It has taken a long time - and a credible and acceptable alternative - for Scots to see they are not a prime or any credible consideration in UK politics except as a Labour banked vote no matter what.


English MP's completely miss the point and ethos of the SNP. {or who voted in the referendum or what 'unanimous' means.}

Down South these polls have been met with disbelief  and some panic in Westminster. They can't quite grasp that the referendum has not put the genie of Scotland and the SNP back in the bottle. They are confused that the losers have acted like the winners and somehow the winners are looking increasingly like the losers. There has been uncertainty in the corridors of Westminster while they try to assess the implications of what they never predicted and can't understand . There have been miles of newspaper columns written by English journalists who embarrass themselves in exposing how little attention they have paid and how little they understand what has happened to the political landscape here. That these polls come from a large sample inside actual constituencies and mirrors what the Scotland wide polls said is undeniable. Voices of English MP's are raised in consternation at the prospect of a demanding Scottish accent being loud in Westminster.

Normally parties would look for a unique selling point but the Westminster establishment have negligible points of difference on key policy. The exception and difference this time is the loony right with UKIP, the party that David Cameron really has to beat to win a majority in England, and that is why the UK General Election arguments will largely focus on the EU. Scotland and any other issues are a skirmish by comparison in their eyes. A skirmish that looks like Scottish Labour will have to predominately fight alone. {They have been banging on about how independent they are after all} Understandable given how UK Labour seem to understand Scotland even less than the branch office up here. I don't think Messrs' Murray, Miliband or Cameron will be getting much sleep any time soon.

It's yet to be seen how this will play out. Will the SNP be complacent and think the election already won? Will Jim Murphy and Labour find some credible way to start a fight back or will he fall back on spin, policy theft and double talk? Will voters baulk at the demise of Labour as a credible force or will they leave for good? Has their vote simply been loaned for this one occasion? Will Westminster pay attention or will entrenched notions of entitlement win the day? Will English MP's attitudes become vehement with anti-Scotland or anti-left bias and how will voters here react if that's the case? Can change here be the start of a reimagining within UK labour or even further afield. Will Scotland get the more powers needed to make significant change without damaging herself in the process? Will this go down as being a key a step closer to independence?

There are interesting times ahead.

Porage anyone?

Step Right Up.

Here we go again.

GORDON Brown and Jim Murphy will today unveil a new general election pledge to give Holyrood the power to top up and vary the UK’s state pension and welfare benefits.  {Scotsman newspaper}

Faced with poll after poll showing 'Scottish' Labour trailing some 20+ percentage points in the forthcoming elections for Westminster MP's, which is likely to mean a huge reduction in the number of Scottish MP's Labour here can send south to prop up the rest of the Labour Party, today the behemoth for Scotland that is Gordon Brown has heaved himself up and 'intervened' once again with a promise of 'VOW PLUS' if Labour are elected into UK Government.

What a typically cynical and self-serving ploy for votes. Some real desperation on display. After all it's not being offered because they think it's right for Scotland. Only because they feel they have to for the Labour Party.

Gordon Brown who was {labour}Prime Minister {but not elected as such since he 'inherited' the post from Tony Blair} makes a habit of seemingly coming out of nowhere to save Scotland from its misguided notions of free thought by dangling carrots of indeterminate size to be supplied at some notional future point by a third party. {See 'THE VOW'}

This usually portrayed in MSM {mainstream media} as an 'intervention' of heroic proportions {so brace yerselves!}

But.

It's not and never has been a proper 'intervention' by Oor Gordon. {Intervention: Its origin is from the Latin intervenire, derived from inter- ‘between’ + venire ‘come’.}  It's a stupid {but perhaps deliberately loaded by MSM to increase gravitas and import} way to describe Gordon Brown’s participation in political debates. The man's been a professional politician for decades and is a sitting MP for the Labour Party, even though he describes himself as "an ex-MP", whose stated party policies are opposing independence.  This, like THE VOW, as a fellow blogger aptly put it, "is no more an “intervention” than accusing Wayne Rooney of “intervening” in a football match." He’s not any kind of external factor, which is never explained adequately in the press, it’s exactly what he’s supposed to be there to do all the time.  Gordon Brown is a backbench MP, an everyday combatant in the field of politics. Him doing his job is not an “intervention”, a shock move by some impartial statesman so struck by the arguments he’s abandoning a position of neutrality to issue unprecedented backing for one side or the other. He isn’t the Queen. {although she did intervene in the referendum as it transpires}

So Gordy steps back into the fray. This surely must be somewhat disconcerting to Jim Murphy, the recently elected leader of Scottish Labour.  { even though this is a deliberate misnomer and sleight of hand. There is no such thing. The 'Scottish Labour Party' can't exist other than asThe UK Labour Party in Scotland although you wouldn't hear that distinction as Big Jim trumpets the 'difference' between Scottish and UK Labour even though they are the same 'national party' legally and constitutionally. According to Jim, the last leader - who resigned saying Scotland is treated like a branch office and has to 'toe the line' - had it all wrong and he is completely independent up here. Ironic for a man who fought independence so hard during the referendum to bang on about its importance for Scotland so much so soon afterwards! Of course its only Scottish Labour that should be independent to best meet the needs of Scotland. Nothing else does.} After all, he's just been elected as the single unifying force to lead Labour to halt the haemorrhage of support and save it from annihilation in the forthcoming elections. He's been courted by media, particularly BBC TV, during this honeymoon period where he seems to appear every day talking softly and earnestly about this or that where Labour will no longer neglect its voters and take them for granted, or how they have changed and accept that they have to do that to represent the people of Scotland and then right in the middle of it steps up Gordon Brown.

Nice!

So Daddy Brown steps up and says "Stand aside Jim. I know exactly what's needed. This is what you need to do. It's easy!  Even more 'more powers'. Again. Because we didn't give them quite enough more powers with THE VOW. We didn't get our input into The Smith Commission right. We need to bribe these fine voters with even more vague powers very soon - but only if you vote for us! That'll sort it out for you. After all, it worked last time."

Yes, the man in charge of Scotland must be very pleased right now. He's not good enough to deliver this message. He's not trusted enough, respected enough and he doesn't have enough integrity to deliver that message. He's not the man for that job. .

Now that's a strange message to be sending the voting public. Is Gordon Brown, good old GB to be wheeled out every time the shit appears to be hitting the fan. And Jim Murphy? Hasn't he been spending the last few weeks saying that the powers that are to come will represent THE VOW being over delivered and that we should leave that behind us and get over it and move on with other important stuff like accepting what else he has to say as if he's Moses come down from the mountain top.

It worked last time Gordon? Well look at the state of the place. There's rejection and discontent in almost every corner. Would you like to try and get it right second time?

Step right up and patronise even more of the electorate as well as undermine Labour's main man in da 'hood.

Lots of luck with that one.