THE Labour Party’s current identity crisis could not have come at a worse time. Westminster’s allegedly left-wing opposition have spent the past week either sitting on their hands or actively goading the Conservative Government into pressing its foot on the accelerator driving the United Kingdom ever further into a right-wing post-Brexit wasteland.

Which strategic mastermind, I wonder, whispered in Keir Starmer’s ear that the Tories would never expect to be outflanked on the right?

Every global crisis is nothing if not an opportunity to make serious bank, and for some the pandemic has been extremely good for business. The world’s 10 richest billionaires alone have grown their wealth by at least $540 billion – alongside a steady stream of job losses and financial stress for the rest of us.

Gross economic injustice is a key feature of our financial system and traditionally the Labour Party would be the first to challenge the empire-building mentality of the global elite. Not so under Keir Starmer’s Labour, whose strategy for reversing the flow of wealth out of our communities and into the vaults of billionaires is to sit back and do nothing.

READ MORE: Scottish Labour fighting for survival in May's election, Anas Sarwar warns

This week, the UK Labour Party leader announced he would reject plans to increase corporation tax as part of the recovery Budget following the pandemic. There is no justification for opposing steps toward a more just tax system in the face of the economic crisis that is looming ahead of us – and that’s something even the Tories can see.

And speaking of businesses and individuals who have made a fortune during the coronavirus pandemic, we can’t overlook the millions of pounds that have been handed to the friends and donors of Boris Johnson’s administration.

As more details come to light of just how many millions of taxpayers’ pounds have, with zero accountability, been accrued by fresh-out-of-the-box PPE suppliers, it’s unjustifiable to think that Matt Hancock can remain in his position as Health Secretary. Yet Keir Starmer will justify it. The Labour leader appears more than content to let Hancock’s blatant cronyism slip by with little more than a sorry.

Even more bizarrely, Starmer claims that the public doesn’t want to see Hancock removed from his position following the revelation that he acted unlawfully in keeping the names of contract winners hidden. As a member of the public myself, I would have to disagree on that point.

This should have people in the streets, shaking the foundations of Whitehall. Instead, if the polls are to be believed, England is clamouring to return the Tories to power yet again at the next election while Labour sit idly by wondering why their support stagnates.

This was an open goal for the Labour Party, which, rather than taking the Tory Government to task, have instead been dabbling once again with support for the abomination that is the Trident nuclear weapons system; a ticking war crime in close proximity to Scotland’s largest city.

Labour have become so obsessed with casting off whatever image problems they may have had under Corbyn, both real and imagined, that they have entirely lost sight of what it means to be a left-wing opposition.

Meanwhile in Scotland, any hope that Scottish Labour might find their own path and reject the limp leadership of Starmer has unhappily come to an end with the election of Anas Sarwar as new party leader.

READ MORE: Latest poll should be a wake-up call but catastrophe is not on the horizon

At least Monica Lennon had considered how Scottish Labour could flourish should it break free from Westminster. That opportunity for change has now seemingly passed by.

With his “do as I say, not as I do” attitude, Sarwar is the antithesis of what Scottish Labour needed to revitalise itself in a nation that the Labour Party just no longer cares to understand.

The UK Parliament is a playground for the two dominant British parties, both content to fill the troughs of their allies while endorsing a broken electoral system that keeps any legitimate challenger from spoiling the fun.

For all their posturing about becoming a meaningful opposition following the Corbyn years, Labour have become a party without any significant policies to bring about the radical changes that have been at its heart for more than a century. The only serious policy that the opposition appear to have is that Scotland must remain chained to their incompetence.

Westminster is now presenting a united front in opposing meaningful economic justice, keeping Trident nuclear weapons on the Clyde and overlooking, if not endorsing, rank cronyism. This is the backdrop for anyone arguing that Scotland should not be granted the right to seek a different path through independence.

READ MORE: An independent Scotland needs to free itself from the royal family

Labour’s abject failure to be anything close to a left-wing opposition has a significant impact on the lives of everyone living in Scotland, and not just because they have functionally kept the Conservatives in power for the past 10 years through their ineptitude.

With their newfound identity, Labour have guaranteed that there will be no serious left-wing party in Westminster any time soon, even if the Tories were voted out.

The two beasts of Whitehall demand the people unify behind their right to rule, and rule from the right, meaning the argument that progressive voices should stay in the Union and work to elect Labour is well and truly over.