The Labour party in Scotland has got itself into a hopeless mess on the topic of another independence referendum. Actually, that previous sentence could just have stopped at the word mess. The two contenders for the position of Labour’s Scottish branch manager, Michael Marra and Jackie Baillie’s wee pet Joe Fagan, had an embarrassing car crash of an interview with Bernard Ponsonby this week on the Go Politics radio show.
When asked to spell out the democratic route to another referendum, neither was able to provide anything approaching a clear and coherent answer. It’s a very bad look indeed when one of Scotland’s most respected political journalists ends up laughing at you in public due to the woeful stupidity of your answer to a question about a vital issue in Scottish politics.
How to trigger another independence referendum is the single most important question in Scottish politics, one which lies at the heart of the constitutional fault line which has defined the Scottish political landscape since 2014, so you might have thought that one or both of these two men would have prepared a straightforward and logical response to it beforehand, all the more so as they hope to lead the joint second largest contingent of MSPs and lead the Scottish branch of a party which still claims that it seeks to become the party of government in Holyrood.
Yet both Marra and Fagan were woefully unprepared, and neither could give an answer which was logically consistent or made much in the way of sense, which tells us all we need to know about the arrogance and intellectual poverty at the heart of the Labour branch office in Scotland and the mediocrity of the two men who purport to be the future of the Labour party in Scotland. And you thought the barrel bottom had been scraped with Sarwar and Leonard. This pair are patently inept and would be out of their depth in a stagnant puddle.
Marra’s answer was that Labour would only agree to a referendum when independence became the settled will of the people of Scotland. However he refused to set out any specific tests on how it would be determined that independence was indeed the settled will of the people of Scotland. The Labour party is going to be the judge of that. Marra said it could be determined by opinion polls and election results but refused to be drawn on specifics. Consistent majorities for independence in opinion polls, the SNP winning its fifth victory in a row and a record number of pro-independence MSPs isn’t it though. Just because.
Note the self-serving way in which Marra conflates two very distinct issues here. Wanting an independence referendum is not the same as wanting independence. There is higher support in Scotland for an independence referendum than there is for independence itself.
Some people who are undecided on independence want an independence referendum in order that the issues around independence are aired during the referendum campaign allowing them to come down definitively on one side or the other. There are other people who oppose independence but who recognise that another referendum is necessary in order to finally put to bed a question which remains very much the defining issue in modern Scottish politics. Marra has loftily decided that the views of this not insignificant segment of Scottish public opinion doesn’t count when it comes to determining whether to hold another independence referendum.
Marra then rewrote history by asserting that devolution was only introduced in the late 1990s because it was the settled will of the people of Scotland. Devolution had been the settled will of the people of Scotland all throughout the 1990s but that didn’t prevent Thatcher and Major refusing to implement it. The Tories continued to insist that it was by no means the settled will of the people of Scotland and kept doing so right up until the devolution referendum. Scotland only got its parliament after the election of a Labour government to Westminster which had a manifesto commitment to introducing it. Despite that, Labour spent the couple of years after the 1997 general election watering down the powers of the proposed Scottish parliament.
In the absence of any agreed and set process for determining the settled will of the people of Scotland, there’s nothing to prevent the Labour party from denying it exists just as the Tories did in the 1990s. How very convenient.
Fagan’s reply was if anything even more asinine and intelligence insulting. Fagan said it would be “obvious” when independence represented the settled view of Scottish voters. When pressed on how it could be determined it was “obvious”, Fagan replied by opinion polls, but like Marra he declined to be specific about what level of support these opinion polls should report, or whether these polls should include polls like Scotland in Union’s non-standard question (To paraphrase “Do you want to leave the loving bosom of the UK even though you’d die horribly in poverty?”), or polls like YouGov’s which employ methodologies like weighting by the outcome of the 2014 referendum which artificially boost apparent No responses.
It will be obvious to the Labour party by vibes and feels presumably. Aren’t you glad that’s been cleared up? This is what happens when you ask a question and the job of the Labour politician being asked depends on not comprehending it. Labour politicians in Scotland cannot answer this question because it’s above their pay grade and they cannot admit that it’s not for them to make the determination. It will be decided by their bosses in London, but to acknowledge the reality we all know and understand is tantamount to an admission that “Scottish Labour” is not really a distinct political party but a mere branch office, a wholly owned franchise of a London based party.
However I can cut through all the waffle and bullshittery for you. Marra and Fagan both agree that the people of Scotland will have the right to decide on the constitutional future of Scotland when the Labour party decides that we have the right to decide. So pretty much exactly what Labour’s position has always been then. Thanks for clearing that up, lads. Isn’t it just fantastic that Labour party members in Scotland are being given such diversity of views to choose between.
After wrestling for hours with PayPal, I have finally compiled a list of the emails of almost everyone who makes a regular monthly donation to the blog and will soon launch the weekly bonus premium email article for those who make a monthly contribution to the blog. I had hoped to launch this in June but unfortunately it will be delayed for a while. There are a number of people whose emails I am unable to find. Some people donate monthly by Ko-Fi, one makes a monthly donation to last year’s GoFundMe fundraiser, a few people make monthly payments directly by bank transfer. I cannot access the email addresses of any of these people and so cannot add them to the new mailing list. If you are one of these folk, please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com and I’ll add you to the mailing list.
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