CommonSpace columnist James McEnaney says Labour is missing the point in Scotland
IT’S all change in the Labour party these days.
Jeremy Corbyn recently surged to a seemingly impossible victory in the leadership race, winning a four-way battle in the first round of voting and consequently securing an extraordinary mandate from Labour party members.
Labour’s new(ish) leader in Scotland – Kezia Dugdale – has essentially given the green-light for members (including MPs and MSPs) to actively campaign for a Yes vote in the event of a second referendum.
She has also talked of her hope that those who seemed “lost” to Scottish Labour will “look again” at the “changed” party.
John McDonnell – the new shadow chancellor – has explicitly said that it is time for the Scottish left to “come home” to a Labour party.
Earlier this month, Neil Findlay – Corbyn’s ‘man in Scotland’ – tweeted: “OK folks if you think Labour left you – now we are back – join the Labour party today and fight for a better world for all our people.”
And now John McDonnell – the new shadow chancellor – has explicitly said that it is time for the Scottish left to “come home” to a Labour party which he describes as “the only anti-austerity” option.
First, some housekeeping: despite McDonnell’s claims, Labour is not the only anti-austerity party on offer for the people of Scotland. The SNP is far from perfect but there is little doubt that it has become increasingly opposed to some of the key measures of austerity economics and that this position is likely to strengthen over the coming months and years.
Let us not forget that one of the means by which austerity can be made permanent – George Osborne’s ‘fiscal charter’ – is to be backed by Corbyn’s Labour party.
Furthermore, both the Scottish Greens and Rise offer explicit alternatives to austerity alongside a radical reimagining of what a ‘new Scotland’ could look like.
To John McDonnell such parties are clearly not relevant, but this only underlines the ignorance with which the UK Labour party continues to view Scotland.
This nation’s political centre of gravity is now firmly located in the debating chamber of Holyrood, not the green benches of Westminster.
This nation’s political centre of gravity is now firmly located in the debating chamber of Holyrood, not the green benches of Westminster. In that context Jeremy Corbyn’s potential influence is limited; in contrast both the Greens and Rise are credible – and vital – features of a broad and vibrant political canvas which the British establishment still seems unable to see nevermind properly comprehend.
That John McDonnell does not understand, or willfully ignores, this reality says much about the supposedly ‘new politics’ that a Corbynist Labour party is meant to represent.
If (or, in all honesty, when) Scottish Labour is massacred again in May you get the feeling that those in the London HQ will still be scratching their heads wondering what the hell is going on up here.
The answer is simple: we didn’t leave ‘home’, we changed the locks while Labour was out.
But the problem is not just ignorance – McDonnell’s plea also highlighted the arrogant sense of entitlement which, it seems, still permeates the Labour party’s view of Scotland: our votes are theirs by right, our ‘home’ is in the red(ish) corner and it’s time for things to go back to normal. The natural order of things should be restored.
But those days are past, and the past is a foreign country.
If (or, in all honesty, when) Scottish Labour is massacred again in May you get the feeling that those in the London HQ will still be scratching their heads wondering what the hell is going on up here.
Here and now, in a country which has been irrevocably changed despite the No vote last year, the old assumptions are gone, the old tactics rejected. The days of simply voting Labour and hoping for a better world have been washed away and now, as the water recedes, it is increasingly clear that things can never go back to how they used to be.
It has become a cliche to say it, but the referendum changed everything.
Can the thousands of voters who abandoned the party in favour of independence ever be won back by a party which is still ostensibly unionist? Will those who jumped to the opposite end of Scotland’s new political spectrum ever forget, or forgive, a pro-union campaign which saw Labour share a platform with Tories?
Can the party ever recover from the perception that its conduct throughout and following the indyref campaign was rooted in concern for the Labour party rather than the Scottish people?
Never forget that for left-wing supporters of independence a Yes vote was – and still is – the means by which an end to austerity and a permanent rejection of a Tory-driven political narrative can take place.
Even a Corbyn victory in 2020 could only offer Scotland a temporary respite, and it is worth remembering that no matter how the people of Scotland vote, Britain gets what England wants.
The answer is simple: we didn’t leave ‘home’, we changed the locks while Labour was out.
What matters now is this: nearly half of Scotland, and a third of Labour members, backed independence, and there is little reason to believe that this support is likely to disappear.
As Rise’s Jonathon Shafi has already pointed out: “The social base for Corbyn’s left-wing ideals are to be found in the communities which voted Yes and would do so again tomorrow.”
His victory should be celebrated by progressive from Lerwick to Land’s End, but his ‘movement’ is not ours and Labour is not our home.
Jeremy Corbyn’s election has given us an ally; it does not offer us a leader.
Picture courtesy of Chris Beckett