Dear All
Happy New Year 2017, hope you had a nice time and everything
went well.
I was in two minds whether or not to fire up a blog post
today since earlier I was at a funeral, my friend’s dad. It was a sombre time
as my friend’s mum had passed away a week before his dad died. It was a small
gathering but I wanted to go to show support for the family at what is a
difficult time.
Mr. William Brown was a joiner; I had known him in passing
since early 1980’s when I used to go to Bellahouston Sports Centre to do karate
with his son.
A nice guy, old time Labour voter!
My last post of 2016 was on Scottish Labour which is in a
real mess, at present there are elections on the go to the Scottish Executive
Committee, I wouldn’t be voting as I am no longer a member but a candidate for
the Pollok Ward in Glasgow. I purchased my first election materials for the
campaign……. Whoopee!
Anyway let’s talk turkey, the Scottish Labour Party are
between a rock and hard place, the Scottish Party have been wiped out at
Westminster, in order to make a comeback, they need to change substantially,
better leaders, better candidates and better policies.
Someone who has a vision who unities the Corbyn left with
the Blairite faction; not an easy task, easier to drawn up policy than pull off
that trick in my opinion. If the Labour Party down south work with the SNP,
they are cutting their own throats politically, the reality of life is that you
cannot work with the SNP.
The Fabian Society who I don’t trust as far as I could throw
them says that Labour has no prospect of winning the next general election
outright, and should consider an alliance with other parties.
Well, they got that part right on there being no prospect of
winning the next general election outright, Jeremy Corbyn’s stance on immigration
killed that stone dead when he said he wants to keep freedom of movement. Jeremy
Corbyn is better on domestic policy than he is on foreign affairs. An alliance
with the SNP is the road to disaster as the outcome is already written; the SNP
would attempt to hold any Labour Government hostage.
Scottish Labour needs to solve its own problems, and as the collapse
continues, you cannot help feel that 2017 will see them wiped off the face of
the earth, and also in the next two elections for Westminster and Holyrood.
No one wants to work for the Scottish Labour Party.
The basic problem with the Scottish Labour Party is leadership,
everything else wrong is basically held up by this flaw. Fundamentally the
party doesn’t know how to campaign, the activist base isn’t knowledgeable and
the party structures aren’t dynamic. There have been some ideas, the social media
and Leaders classes but all this will be for nothing unless those who go
through these courses can plan and think better.
People get awfully sick of being just used to deliver
leaflets or the dreadful way that canvassing is carried out in the party.
The Fabian Society is nothing more than a think tank for the
Blair mob; their basic idea like Blair is to hold the centre-ground of British
politics, and to appeal to those who voted both Leave and Remain on Brexit. The
Blair crowd playing to the crowd on immigration to cosy up to the Lave camp is
pitiful, let’s get it right, these people didn’t give a toss for immigration control
in past, now the winds of change have happened, they suddenly get it?
The idea of a grand collation which see Labour, the SNP and
the Lib Dems as partners is an acceptance of Scotland being lost for the Labour
Party. The wipe out for the Westminster MPs to be replaced by the SNP was
always on the cards, 2014, gave people the notion to say to Scottish Labour
that they have failed.
What did Scottish Labour do?
It didn’t listen, Jim Murphy started off his 2015 campaign with
the biggest ‘social justice’ issue of our time, the Fitba Act.
He then followed up that success with, you guessed it; get a
drink at a football match! My blog post of Feb 2015 was written after a few
weeks of sitting fuming at the contempt that Scottish Labour had held the
public in. There was Scottish Labour thinking the public was ‘daft bastards’
and the public decided to put them out on the street.
My opinion at the time and which I still hold was serves
them right, it didn’t matter that trash got in like Natalie McGarry, what was
important that a lesson was taught, and the more painful the better.
Did Scottish Labour learn from that?
No!
2016, back to the polls, and more fitba sh*t, if it didn’t
work the first time, which led to the biggest defeat in Scottish Labour history
why did anyone think it would work second time around?
The Fabian Society in my opinion by its intervention wants
to undermine Corbyn, if he doesn’t change he will kill off his chances anyway
for remaining leader, you know that the Blair crowd are keen to get rid of him.
Like Scottish Labour, they think failed ideas work second time round, they don’t.
Before the 2015 general election, Nicola Sturgeon offered to
help put Ed Miliband into Downing Street. The Labour Party sat on the fence and
when it was too late and they had killed off any chance of winning, they came
out against the SNP idea.
Too little too late to save the election!
The Tories played a blinder saying that the Labour Party would
have to dance to the SNP’s tune and produced billboard posters of the then
Labour leader in Alex Salmond’s pocket.
It worked; the Tories were smart enough to recognise people’s
fear.
Labour MSP Anas Sarwar said talk of a progressive alliance
with the SNP was “laughable” but as an MSP, he doesn’t speak for Corbyn but I
doubt that Corbyn or his advisors are so stupid as to cosy up to Nicola
Sturgeon. Nicola Sturgeon has overplayed her hand on Scottish independence; she
has literally nowhere to go.
Labour MSP Anas Sarwar said:
“The SNP is not a progressive party. There have been no
redistributive polices from the SNP in government. Under the SNP, Tory
austerity is simply being passed on in Scotland, with the Nationalists planning
a £327million cut to valued local services in 2017. There is also nothing
progressive about seeking to break away from the rest of the UK - our biggest
trading partner. The SNP doesn’t want an alliance with Labour – it hates the
Labour Party and believes its destruction and continuation of Tory government
in Westminster is the route to independence. People across the UK should spend
less time focusing on Nicola Sturgeon’s grandstanding and look at what is
actually happening in Scotland and the SNP’s record in government.”
The key point of his statement is the SNP hates the Labour
Party. This is because both of them are fishing in the same pond for the same
fish, the working class vote, Sturgeon’s problem is that time is against her,
yes, incompetence does take its toll so the drip drip effect applies here. The
trouble for voters is who to jump to as a credible opposition, the Tories
gained Labour voters because of the Union but that is a temp measure for them,
the vote is in flux.
Of Scottish Labour’s problems, Anas Sarwar said:
"It's a serious warning and quite rightly the Fabian
Society say the roots of Labour's problem pre-date Jeremy Corbyn. These are big
challenges for Labour but I do not see the answer to Labour's challenge as
being to team up with the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and a rag-bag of other
parties."
The solution is that Scottish Labour needs a Nye Bevan
moment.
In past there were Labour Politicians who stood not just on the
Scottish domestic stage but also on the World stage, at present there isn’t
anyone who can fit that description, what we get is a series on populist ‘tat’
shovelled out as being meaningful but in reality instantly forgotten.
The Labour Party allowed Scottish Labour to chart their own
course and then the party collapsed in Scotland.
There are no deals as Anas Sarwar says to be done with the
SNP at Westminster or indeed anywhere else, maybe Kezia Dugdale better start to
bring forward more ideas to reform the way the Labour Party operates and get
people who want to deliver for the people. And the sooner she gets in gear the
better, the momentum crowd want rid of her asap….
Never a dull moment in Scottish Labour, I imagine that panic
is running wild in Glasgow City Chambers as the council election approaches.
To show how bad the problems in the Labour Party are; Jeremy
Corbyn apparently doesn't consult Tom Watson on strategy decisions according to
Watson, I wouldn’t either in Corbyn’s position, not even the time of day would
he get out of me after his carry on.
Finally vote George Laird for Glasgow Pollok 2017, the real
alternative voice for the people of Pollok.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
great article
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