Scottish Labour seem to be slipping deeper and deeper into an Alice Through the Looking Glass world where the acceptance of reality is, at best, an optional extra. First we had a letter from Labour candidates waffling about the “uncertainty and economic upheaval that leaving the UK would cause”, and then adding as an afterthought that the Tories are also “threatening our place in Europe”. Er, the Tories aren’t “threatening” anything, this isn’t David Cameron in 2012 making vague noises about an EU referendum in the medium-term. The Tories are actually taking us out of Europe, probably without any deal, in a matter of a few short weeks. Scotland is indeed facing “uncertainty and economic upheaval”, and that’ll be caused entirely by the prospect of a No Deal Brexit, which itself has been caused indirectly by the mistake of voting to stay in the UK in 2014. We’ve essentially reached the point where it’s intellectually dishonest to claim (as the likes of Alex Cole-Hamilton do) to be in favour of both EU membership and remaining part of the UK. Those two things are now irreconcilable, and a choice will have to be made. And that hasn’t happened as a result of some sort of dastardly SNP plot – the people of England freely chose in the 2016 referendum to change the nature of the ‘deal’ that was on offer for Scotland as part of the UK.
Then we had Richard Leonard “slapping down” John McDonnell (a slightly odd thing for a branch office manager to be doing to the Shadow Chancellor) by insisting that the majority of people in Scotland are opposed to a second independence referendum. To state the bleedin’ obvious, he’s making himself look a bit bloody ridiculous saying that sort of thing, because the last two opinion polls – including one published just two days ago – showed a slim majority in favour of holding a second indyref within the next couple of years.
To reiterate, though, the whole notion of a Scottish party branch pulling its errant London leadership “back into line” is really rather peculiar. The logic of saying that Nicola Sturgeon can’t just hold a referendum when she wants to is that “constitutional matters are for the United Kingdom government to decide”, not for devolved politicians. In other words, if there’s a Labour government in the near future, it’s for Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell to decide. And yet the likes of Ian Murray and Richard Leonard are indignantly saying: “Oh no no no, this is not a matter for the UK government, but for a Scottish party. And not for the party that was actually elected to government in Scotland, but for the second-largest opposition party in the Scottish Parliament.”
What do you have to do to decide the future of Scotland? Stand for election and be soundly beaten, it seems.
