What happened to Labour here could happen there. This is how parties die
Politics requires a credible opposition who hold government to account – one who offer the prospect of an alternative.
But now, and for the foreseeable future, Scotland and the UK is without one due to the state of Labour.
The last year has been one of the most disastrous in the party’s history.
A second election defeat, Scotland lost – and then Brexit. And after last year’s defeat, the party curled up even more in their comfort zone and elected Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn now faces a proper leadership contest against Owen Smith. Labour have in two days enlisted 183,541 new supporters, in addition to 515,000 card-carrying members.
But the party have lost control of who they are and who their members are.
One big difference between Labour and Tories is that Tories love power and know how to use it. Labour don’t love power and don’t know how to use it.
Labour’s biggest electoral winner – Tony Blair – has become a hate figure in the party.
Anti-Blairites have been unable to separate how they judge him from Labour’s 13 years in office – ignoring record public spending, investment in health and education, child and OAP poverty slashed, devolution to Scotland and Wales and lots more.
This record has been at best, lost, and at worst, trashed, by Labour’s turning their back on Blair.
Corbyn has qualities. He is consistent, stands up for what he believes and is generally honest. He is an anti-leader – elected in response to the revulsion that many felt about the Blair years.
But the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, trashed alongside New Labour’s slick presentation, knowing how to do PR and press, and being prepared with sound- bites and core messages.
All of this counts in modern politics, and the Corbyn team have discounted it all, aided by the fact that they have never done front-line politics from the front benches (or anywhere near them).
Those who oppose Corbyn in the party go out of their way to say they agree with his policies and politics but not with him. They attack him as leader, saying he is just not up for the job.
This is a very narrow window through which to criticise – and precludes a bigger debate about the future of the party.
In terms of Scottish Labour, Kezia Dugdale has virtually disappeared while Alex Rowley, her deputy, has started his own side operation.
He has set up a Corbyn campaign and indicated he would consider supporting the calling of a second independence referendum.
In a credible operation, this might look like sending feelers out but here it seems like desperate jockeying for posit ion born of dec l ine into near-irrelevance.
In England, outside their city strongholds, Labour are in a terrible way. The Scottish electoral meltdown of 2015 could be the harbinger for Labour across England.
This state of affairs wasn’t just brought about by Corbyn – or even by Blair, Gordon Brown and New Labour.
This is about decades of neglect and taking people for granted. It taps into the exhaustion of the social democratic tradition – which hasn’t been bold and imaginative anywhere in the developed world since the mid-1970s.
This tradition no longer speaks for any constituency beyond public sector professionals and liberal idealists.
Such groups have little to say on big issues such as public service reform or limits on immigration.
This leaves parties such as Labour and their European counterparts not representing the working or middle class, and not having the radical zeal to shape the future.
No one in Labour is stepping forward with a map to guide the party out of the morass.
They seem to have forgotten that their first mission is to win office and bring about change.
The Labour Party have been called a pillar of the British constitution but they have no God-given right to exist.
This is how once great parties die.