Wee Ginger Dug: The Union is killing Labour in Scotland

And there was everyone else thinking it had more to do with serial incompetence and balloonery, the fact that the party puts its own interests before the country’s, and that embarrassing little episode when Labour stood shoulder to shoulder with the Tories and threatened that they would inflict penury on working class Scottish communities if they dared to vote for independence.

The sad truth for Owen Thingummy is that Labour in Scotland is in such a dire position precisely because of the managerialist style of politics represented by Owen himself. A very long time ago the elected politicians of Labour forgot that they were supposed to be the servants of a broader labour movement, and decided that the broader labour movement was supposed to be the servant of Labour politicians.

The only reason that Owen enjoys any sort of a public profile at all at the moment is because at a time of national crisis, Labour MPs decided to embark upon a selfish exercise in internal party bloodletting. Instead of pressing their advantage Labour completely failed to attack the Conservatives when they were leaderless and directionless in the middle of a disaster that they themselves had created. Instead of going on the offensive at a time when they could have done some serious damage to a Conservative party that was responsible for the greatest calamstrophe in British politics since WW2, Labour destroyed itself. In the breathing space so kindly given to them by Labour’s plotters, the Tories regrouped behind a new leader and now enjoy an unassailable lead in UK-wide opinion polls. So thanks for that, Owen.

Perhaps Owen, Labour wouldn’t be in such a mess in Scotland if the party had remembered that its function is supposed to be to oppose the Conservatives instead of opposing its own leader, who has the temerity to want the kind of left-wing policies the party was founded by the labour movement to espouse. However, according to Owen Thingummy, the solution to the party’s travails isn’t to compete with the SNP in nationalism, it’s to be more patriotic. I’m not entirely clear what sort of difference this makes in practice, and I strongly suspect that Owen doesn’t either. It’s just a vapid soundbite, devoid of any meaning or substance, but it looks good in a newspaper headline. So pretty much like Owen’s campaign then.

It would seem that when a supporter of Scottish independence waves a saltire, that’s nationalism and it’s a bad thing, but when a supporter of the Union waves a Union flag, that’s patriotism and it’s a good thing. But then British nationalism was always characterised by the firm and unshakeable belief that it’s better than all other forms of nationalism by virtue of the fact that it’s not nationalist at all, it’s just patriotic.

All the non-nationalist nationalism in the world isn’t going to protect Labour from parliamentary arithmetic. Even Jackie Baillie and her fag packet calculations can’t protect Labour from the sheer weight of numbers that are about to bury them in a way that a parade of Jeremy Corbyn stories in the Daily Mail never can. The problem for Labour is that the Tory Government is planning to introduce boundary changes during the lifetime of this parliament. Unsurprisingly these changes will heavily favour the Conservatives. Combined with recent changes to the way the electoral roll is compiled, which disproportionately disenfranchise the young and the poor, Labour is facing an electoral chasm even greater than the gap between James Kelly MSP’s self-esteem and some actual charisma.

As a result, without making substantial gains in Scotland, the only way that Labour will be able to win the next General Election will be by winning the sort of landslide that the party won and then squandered in 1997. Labour is in deep trouble in working-class areas of England, where there was a strong vote in favour of leaving the EU and where Labour could easily lose seats to a pro-Brexit Tory party or to UKIP. This makes regaining support in Scotland all the more vital. But that’s about as likely to happen as Jackie Baillie getting an award for services to statistics.

In the Scotland that Owen thinks he can win back with a bit more Saltire-waving in lieu of any policies, the homegrown party leadership enjoys a public profile that a dead hedgehog on the A9 would consider self-effacing. While Labour dahn sarf has been tearing itself apart in Westminster and in the courts, Kezia Dugdale has been notable mainly by her absence. No one knows what Labour in Scotland stands for, least of all Labour itself. The only policy that anyone can be certain of is that Labour can state quite definitely and without qualification that the SNP is very, very, bad.

All the flag waving, sorry, “healthy patriotism”, in the world isn’t going to hide the fact that Labour wants Scotland to knuckle down and take our nasty Tory medicine. There’s no Labour-flavoured British patriotism that’s going to make up for condemning us to years, possibly decades, of Conservative rule. Owen wants a second referendum on the EU, because he was unhappy with the result that produced a Brexit, but he’s equally opposed to a second Scottish independence referendum because then he got a result that was more to his liking. All of Owen’s British patriotism isn’t going to hide the hypocrisy.

The harsh reality for Labour is that the UK they promised Scotland in 2014 doesn’t exist any more, and that UK was destroyed by the Tories and by the kind of Labour managerialist politician that Owen represents. As a Labour activist Tweeted a few days ago as he tried to shore up support for Owen’s brand of patriotism, “If it wasn’t for Scottish Labour Scotland would be an independent country right now. Remember that.” We’re not likely to forget it, and that’s why Labour won’t recover in Scotland until we are an independent country.