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As the Labour Party in Scotland gathers in Aviemore this weekend, it would do well to reflect on why it is not in power north of the border. It’s not enough to say that the electorate simply wanted a change and therefore they got it. If they had simply wanted a change, they could have voted the Tories or the Lib Dems or even the Greens in. They wanted change for specific reasons; war in Iraq, disillusion with New Labour, irritation with Blair, an irrational annoyance with England and a sneaking feeling that actually, devolution and having responsibility for our own affairs wasn’t such a bad thing after all. They didn’t turn away from Labour to give them a poke in the eye. Labour lost an election because it was a party that people in Scotland had started to disengage with and the roots of that probably go back as far as 1997 when New Labour became the vehicle to transport us away from the Tories. Whether Scots actually bought into the shiny new Labour Party or just bought into the idea of a legitimate way of ridding the country of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy is open to debate. However, it is probably fair to assume that Scottish Labour voters did not fully accept the transformation as entirely as other parts of the UK, where a pro-market Labour Party that embraced some aspirational values from the right was a more natural fit. In Scotland, the SNP neatly filled a vacuum of political discontent and a growing confidence in devolution. It presented itself in May as a cohesive, left-of-centre party that believed in Scotland’s abilities. How delicious a pitch; a party that said we could fly. Whether we wanted independence or not – which all the polls tell us we didn’t – it was still nice to hear that we could be great. Being positive goes a long way towards success. Labour’s inherent belief that it is the natural party of power in Scotland has been dealt a blow. It no longer has the monopoly of the social justice agenda nor sole ownership of the Left. It needs to concentrate less on why it is so wrong to have the SNP running the country and more on what its dynamic vision for the future will be. If Labour wants to regain power in Scotland, it needs to divorce itself from the past, unshackle itself from being a party that simply responds in the negative to whatever the SNP does and find its own unique concept for how Scotland could be. Wendy Alexander says the party needs to reform, renew and reconnect but until the Labour Party is honest about some of the reasons why it was voted out of office, then it will never be in power in Scotland again. And never was that more starkly obvious than in the Scottish Parliament last Thursday, when the only thing that shut up the caterwauling from the Labour benches was mere mention by the SNP and the Lib Dems of the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war. The collective shame and enforced silence of Labour MSPs never felt more debilitating. Some sentiments are uniquely Scottish and it is ok to break from the mother ship and express them. In fact, it could do you some good. It is patronising in the extreme to believe that the Scottish electorate voted on a groundless whim for change for change’s sake in May and unless Labour stops the moaning and finds a true sense of purpose, then all it proves is that you can produce a fine whine from a bunch of sour grapes.

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chris thomson, Unregistered

An excellent summary of why Labour is losing power. Labour is in a bind because it is pulled between saying Scotland is great, on the one hand, and saying Scotland is not so great that we can survive and prosper as an independent nation, on the other. This is symptomatic of the collective schizophrenia that is widespread in Scotland today. Unless Labour decides to give unqualified support to Scotland, the party is very unlikely to regain power

Posted 2008-03-29 08:44:41

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