SCOTTISH Labour’s curious desire to bring us all a fresh understanding of the word “stupidity” continues to be a source of wonder. In different circumstances, you could understand why Richard Leonard, leader of the party in Scotland, might wish to speak with a degree of certainty on something ... anything while the UK party is all over the shop on Brexit.
The only problem with Leonard’s desire to bring clarity to the position of the Scottish Branch Office on a referendum on Scottish independence is that he opted for the wrong side. His pronouncement that the party in Scotland will continue to oppose a second referendum because the result of the first one was the settled will of the Scottish people shows that, like his predecessor, he is suffering from the political malady we have come to know as Murphymatosis. Symptoms include blindness, extreme fatigue and fever. The inevitable death can be a long, sad and drawn out process.
READ MORE: Labour are a mess – and their failings are all of their own making
Happily, Jim Murphy the former Scottish Labour leader, after whom this condition was aptly named, is still with us and we wish him a long and healthy life. Sadly, the effects are all too obviously apparent in the party he once led and can be laid at the door of his short and ill-starred stretch as leader.
It became obvious during the latter stages of the first referendum that vast swathes of Labour supporters in the party’s traditional heartlands had opted to support independence. You didn’t have to be a Labour strategist to identify the two main reasons for this phenomenon.
Many of these people, residing in the some of the UK’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, simply felt that independence offered the possibility of their circumstances being improved.
It’s not that they were blind to any of the risks attached; simply that when you are already on society’s bottom rung there is no real risk to speak of. Others, sensing a lurch to the hard right in UK politics felt that only independence offered a chance of escape from a political establishment which valued market forces above the needs of vulnerable human beings.
I suspect that many of those Labour supporters who had originally supported a Yes vote had no intention of supporting the SNP in any forthcoming Holyrood or Westminster elections.
I suspect too though, that many of them were eventually driven into the SNP camp by virtue of the intimidation they faced within the Labour Party in Scotland for opting for Yes and for the leadership’s crazy obsession with wrapping itself in the Union Jack.
These colours might be an appropriate look for a Scottish Tory but on the backs of Labour supporters in Scotland they are destined to run. That Labour in Scotland is now virtually irrelevant as a political force in the country has laid bare the madness of these tactics. That Leonard has now chosen to continue with them shows that he is not the man to make Labour in Scotland matter once more.
To have any chance of recovery in Scotland Labour must ditch its opposition to a second vote on independence. If Leonard was unaware before his party’s UK conference of how circumstances have changed materially since 2014, the huge divisions in his party exposed this week in Liverpool ought to have told him differently.
And is there a clearer mandate for a second referendum on Scottish independence than the small matter of three comfortable electoral victories for the SNP in Scotland since 2014.
Scotland's Gemma Fay
HELP WOMEN'S FOOTBALL KICK ON
THE global growth in popularity of women’s football was given further endorsement this week. It was announced that for the first time there would be a prize recognising the world’s best woman footballer when the annual Ballon D’Or award is announced early next year.
It follows the emergence of a fully professional women’s football league in England for the first time this season and BBC Alba’s visionary decision to provide live coverage of the top women’s league in Scotland.
Wretchedly, Scotland remains without a single full-time female footballer despite the existence of several very fine women’s squads in our top football league. I find it indefensible that after all the sponsorship money rolls in for our top men’s clubs that a little of it could not be diverted to fund even a couple of professional players for the women’s teams that also bear their names and colours.
Such a move would help raise standards and give gifted young female Scottish footballers something tangible to aim for within their own country.
Labour NEC chair, Andy Kerr
SPARE ME THE HAND-WRINING OVER A DAFT JOKE
A PREDICTABLE chorus of booing ensued following some off-colour remarks at the Labour conference by Andy Kerr, chair of the party’s NEC. After inviting a question from a female delegate he attempted a daft joke when he noticed her blessing herself. “Did you cross yourself there? In that case, I might not,” he said.
As a committed Catholic, I can genuinely say that this remark caused me no offence. Though ill-advised, this was an example of bar-room humour that is common in the West of Scotland.
And before the hand-wringing gets under way about the scourge of sectarianism, it is this sort of humour that often acts as a means of puncturing tension and division. Spare me the sanctimonious and insincere mince I’ve witnessed since.
The SNP still possesses too many high-profile individuals who seem obsessed with destroying the state Catholic school sector and who talk about plastic paddies. And why were Labour MPs instructed by a person or persons unknown at their HQ not to support an early-day motion recognising the centenary of Catholic education in Scotland put down by the SNP’s Chris Stephens earlier this year? As for the Tories ... well, the sound of banjos and fiddles is never far away when their backwoodsmen start talking about minorities.
And why is it felt necessary to sound dire warnings to schools about the possibility of excluding pupils who refuse to participate in Nativity plays on the grounds of religious conscience? I know many non-denominational schools hold nativity celebrations but they are a fundamental and traditional feature of the way Christmas is celebrated in Catholic schools. This wasn’t about protecting the rights of children from a non-faith background. It was all about firing another shot across the bows of the Catholic Church in Scotland. Perhaps now children will also be exempted from participating in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
There is a deeply ingrained hostility to Catholicism in parts of civic Scotland that is much more sinister than the clumsy humour of a grizzled Ayrshire trade unionist
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