Kevin McKenna: Why many Yessers still care about fate of Scottish Labour

An electoral apocalypse such as this goes beyond general dissatisfaction with a party’s suite of policies or the personalities of its leaders; this speaks of oblivion: of a party that’s no longer considered relevant by any beyond a hardcore of activists and those who still stand to benefit materially and financially in its death spasms.

Following the SNP’s breakthrough moment at the 2007 Holyrood election, the Labour Party in Scotland have had many opportunities to reflect on the sense of complacency that had lately come to settle within their soul. They’ve ignored them all and those Westminster returns in 2010 tempted them back to their lazy and entitled ways.

Those who have been fervent supporters of Scottish independence for their entire lives or who had it bequeathed to them by their parents may not consider the fate of Scottish Labour to be important or even relevant in a newspaper such as this. Yet for many others whose sense of social justice and the eternal class struggle were forged in the heat of old Labour radicalism, the fate of that party will always matter, even if lately it has become a source of pain and regret.

READ MORE: Wee Ginger Dug: This is the change Scottish Labour really need to make

There have never been sufficient numbers of lifelong nationalists to deliver independence. The movement was always going to require a migration from within Labour’s heartlands to bring about self-determination.

That this has now happened and to a degree that it may now be considered irreversible can be observed in a run of 19 consecutive polls indicating majority support for independence.

For this to have happened within the passing of a political generation means that Labour in Scotland face some profound and fundamental choices if they are ever to be regarded as more than a makeweight in Holyrood; only there, like the Scottish Greens, to maintain a veneer of diversity in Holyrood.

For more than 13 years, the party have been given fair warnings of the changes in Scotland’s political climate. These can be traced back to the collapse of the global banking system when people began to think seriously about the corruption and greed that lay at the heart of our civilised economic structures. For the first time, many of them began to question the trust they’d previously handed to governments that were now exposed as accessories in this.

The Labour government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling was no more able to resist the tide of feral capitalism than a hat in a hurricane. It had sought an easy ride in the slipstream of corporatism and neoliberalism and been engulfed by them. In Scotland, at least, we still had an opportunity to decouple from this runaway train and Labour supporters, pessimistic about their party’s ability or desire to pursue the fight, began to consider independence.

They may still have harboured suspicions about the SNP’s commitment to authentic social justice but in the meantime it offered a temporary home. And it was one where they could at least plan to break the reactionary mould of UK politics and move towards the creation of a state founded on the values that had once created and then driven the Labour Party.

There have been many errors of judgment by Scottish Labour in these years, all of them made by an assortment of rank bad leaders and incompetent party managers.

The worst of these though, by far was a failure at any stage to acknowledge or even recognise this sea-change in the instincts of many of its grassroots supporters.

AND when the scales did finally lift from their eyes, rather than adjust their position on the constitution they chose instead to alienate and intimidate those who had lately come to be persuaded by arguments in favour of an independent Scotland.

Then they wrapped themselves tightly in the Union Jack and reached out to Conservative voters by appealing to the discredited ideas of British exceptionalism.

Gordon Brown, whose lust for power caused him to trade in all his former values began talking about British jobs for British workers.

Here was a man who, when we all thought he was shepherding the nation’s finances, was actually embroiled in a bitter and personal feud with Tony Blair to obtain the keys to 10 Downing Street. That he remains a brooding force in the vanguard of Scottish Labour politics, having founded a Unionist think tank that exhibits all the unhinged signs of a Doomsday cult, is one of the most depressing aspects of the party’s decline in Scotland.

It seems that Brown’s influence is alive in the person of Anas Sarwar, the Labour MSP considered to be the favourite to replace Richard Leonard as leader of the party in Scotland. Like Brown, Sarwar remains stubbornly in thrall to the British state and its neoliberal values.

A millionaire cast in the mould of Sir Keir Starmer, the party’s UK leader, his personal fortune derives from a thriving family business whose patriarch, while notionally Labour, chose not to recognise trade unions or pay the National Living Wage.

READ MORE: Ruth Wishart: Is Douglas Ross serious about getting Better Together going again?

His mission statement, faithfully reprinted without question by the Scottish edition of The Guardian, was a vapid and sanctimonious mess full of fake virtue and airy moonbeams. The headline – Scotland needs unity, not division – gives you an indication of the vacuous and condescending mince that was to come. It seems a majority of Labour MSPs still believe in this stuff, although I suspect most are rather more eager to lay their hands on the extra few kudos that come with being given a front-bench position in any new shadow cabinet (assuming they even make second place at Holyrood).

Sarwar’s opponent, Monica Lennon, at least appears to have grasped what’s been happening in the party’s traditional communities. Lennon said that while she’s not promoting independence, she’s not in the business of telling people what they can’t have. “We can’t just wish it away,” she said.

Lennon was one of a handful of Labour MSPs, who having had the temerity to vote for Jeremy Corbyn in the 2017 UK Labour leadership contest found herself menaced by the Anas Sarwar/Ian Murray faction at Holyrood.

She’s far more authentic than Sarwar but, like too many others on the left, has embraced the shallow politics of identity that masquerades as radicalism. This soft path of least resistance, like the cosy Unionism of her leadership opponent, will not improve the prospects of those communities Labour has forgotten. The party’s long walk in the wilderness of Scottish politics will continue for a while yet.