Corbyn, Labour and Scotland

Jeremy Corbyn told the parliamentary Labour Party (14 September) that Tom Watson, Labour's new deputy and he would be visiting Scotland at least one day per month in order to boost Scottish Labour's vote before the May 2016 elections for the Scottish parliament (Holyrood.)

Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP, told the media that she hoped Jeremy Corbyn's victory in the vote for the leadership of the Labour Party would mean that Labour would collaborate with the SNP to build a common front against austerity and to oppose Trident - Britain's nuclear weapon. She also told the Scottish media that as Jeremy Corbyn was unlikely to win the 2020 British election, the only way for Scots to escape future Tory rule was to achieve full independence in Scotland.

Behind this opening salvo there is a tangled web of confusion among different parts of the anti-austerity movement in England, Wales and Scotland. There is, undoubtedly, a debate to be had. If Scotland wants an end to austerity, surely it should vote for a UK wide Labour Party, for Corbyn. Indeed, without Scotland voting Labour there is little chance that Corbyn's Labour Party could win any General Election. On the other hand surely Corbyn's leadership is fragile. It would be better to ensure the end of austerity in Scotland if it were independent. On top of that, is it not 'more progressive' for Scotland to be able to decide its own political future anyway?

The debate will rage and roar away. Without in anyway intruding on the right of the Scots to determine their own future here are some (hopefully clarifying) thoughts.

Some (influential) supporters of Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party are completely convinced that the national question in Scotland (and therefore the SNP) are now a dangerous, 'blind alley' for the real 'battle for socialism'. Scotland must get behind Corbyn's chance to become a Labour Prime Minister for the whole UK and the SNP 'diversion' should be totally defeated. Such opinions in England are found most forcefully represented among some of the leadership of the left unions. (In fact this stance is actually an extension of their previously held views about the Scottish referendum campaign.)

This blog has argued before that Scotland is not a colonial nation dominated by English imperialism. But there is no doubt that Scottish politics is dominated by Westminster. This is not the same as the political conditions in Newcastle or Liverpool. Scotland has a national, political identity which means that just as Greek and Spanish anti-austerity movements call for the establishment of the people's sovereignty over remote and wealth-serving institutions that drive the EU, so millions of Scots tie their domination by the Westminster political class to the possible freedom that might be offered by the achievement of their own national sovereignty. In Scotland, the poverty question, the question of inequality, of Trident and of welfare, in other words the class questions, are not the opposite or alternative to the national question. They are now inextricably linked.

Unfortunately for this perspective, the Scottish Labour Party (despite the removal of the hapless Jim Murphy) is now led by another ex-Blairite. In Scotland most people voted SNP in the last General Election (May 2015) because, unlike Labour, the SNP argued for an end to austerity and to Trident. Kezia Dugdale, Scottish Labour leader, attacks the SNP in Scotland over education results, over 'pushing' for a new referendum, over a long list of things — but not over the absolute need for no Trident and an anti-austerity Scotland. Scottish Labour is unlikely to be promoting Corbyn's politics anytime soon.

Just as it was the anti-austerity, anti-war movement in England that toppled the traditional leadership of Labour in favour of Jeremy Corbyn (and certainly not some long term mushrooming campaign inside the Labour Party, or even inside the unions) so the same trend in Scotland has, up to now, associated itself with support for the SNP - albeit critically (including many of the Scottish members and activists in those same left unions whose leaders are hell bent on burying the national question). This is because Labour has been more than tried, and then tested to destruction, over decades in Scotland. And what the Scots have learned is that Labour cannot defeat the Tories in England - even if they hold Scotland. Worse, that they have tried to become them. They note Corbyn's victory and are glad for it. They also note Corbyn's weak social base and the political fragility of his leadership, and they feel the absolutely decisive requirement to get away forever from Tory governments of both the Conservative and the Labour kind. And more; to get away from the distant, overbearing and corrupt Westminster political class, with its thousands of representatives in the leadership of all three traditional parties.

Can Corbyn's tremendous victory mesh with, even push forward a more radical perspective and political movement in Scotland?

Undoubtedly. But not by trying to unwish the hard political experience of the Scots. (Although some of Corbyn's English well wishers will need to learn the value of modesty.) It is perfectly reasonable, from any point of view, to promote the requirement for Scottish Labour to take its own 'independence' from Westminster. An independent Scottish Labour Party might then stand more than a fighting chance to take on the SNP's programme — from the left. If the Scottish Labour Party removed the issue of an independent Scotland from the agenda — by supporting it — then the social question, the class question would determine the direction of Scottish politics, to the benefit of the Scots - to the benefit of Scottish Labour and to the benefit of the rest of Britain.

A determining socialist presence in Holyrood would transform the political debate in all of the rest of the UK, while breaking up the power of Britain's political class and the over-mighty post imperial ambitions of its rulers. England would be a smaller country and with smaller European countries in mind, it might even begin to learn to behave itself better. The key is that the movement in England, against war and against austerity, that has already pushed over the rotten leadership of a decaying mass party, as another aspect of Westminster's political crisis erupts, would be immensely strengthened. And that is good for all our futures.

A Labour of Love?

Two recent sets of comments have shone some more light on Labour's troubles with the May 7 General Election, especially about its understanding of Britain's political crisis. Milliband made a statement ruling out a coalition with the SNP.
'There will be no SNP ministers in my Government' he tried to thunder. (March 16.)

This was followed later in the evening by Newsnight, the BBC current affairs programme, that held an interview with Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour Party's guardian angel, and which was designed to fill in Labour's thinking about the SNP. Kirsty Wark, the interviewer, tried to drill into what had been left unsaid by Labour regarding the SNP after May 7. In this she was just following the media pack. More interesting was Murphy's key message to her which he felt needed to be repeated. Of course Labour did not require a coalition with the SNP. It clearly gave him great pleasure to tell us all that in the deeply unlikely event that Labour did not win an outright majority, then surely the SNP would anyway want to vote for all the progressive measures that Labour had lined up and keep Labour in government. If they did not, he murmured silkily, they would have to take the consequences in Scotland of bringing down a Labour government at Westminster and letting in the Tories.

You can imagine the Labour Party 'thinkers' and 'political advisors' sniggering in delight at their coup. The Tories' fox shot. The SNP between a rock and a hard place. At least Milliband had the grace to wear his permanently shell-shocked expression when delivering his first half of the new policy. Poor Jim was unable, as he purred his new inspiration to a by now rather sickened 'Kirsty', to avoid looking like the cat who had got at the cream.

The day before, another Labour leader who has obviously thought harder than some of his colleagues on these matters was reported in the media:

'During a debate about digital democracy, he was asked whether Labour might in go the same way as social democratic parties in Greece and Spain which have been outflanked by radical anti-austerity movements such as Syriza and Podemos.
Asked whether the Labour Party might "not exist" within ten years, Mr Cruddas, a renowned free-thinker, replied':
“Yes, yes.”
“There is no safe ground for any orthodox parties and the stakes could be high potentially. They could just disintegrate in real time. And I include in that the party that I represent." (Daily Telegraph 15 March 2015.)

Jon Cruddas was made the Labour Party policy coordinator in the shadow cabinet in 2012. In a negative reaction to the Blair premiership he received the highest number of votes in the first round of the 2007 Labour Party Deputy leadership election. He has clearly been studyng the new realities of British political life. His latest thoughts seem at least to grasp something of the scale of Labour's crisis.

In contrast, Milliband and Murphy's reactions to the SNP feel like a desperate and utterly sectarian attempt to hang on to Labour's past. But now it is any old sort of past that will do. The last time the SNP were 'trapped' into support by a minority Labour Government was in the days of Jim Callaghan. And the lesson to be learned?  When that 'agreement' with Labour broke down, what happened next? -  demanded a flushed Jim Murphy on Newsnight. Why, the SNP action brought in Thatcher! Well; now we have got that clear let's all hope that sort of thing doesn't happen again! It is the SNP that is responsible for Tory success. In Jim Murphy's mind, Thatcher's victory had nothing to do with the combined failures of Wilson, Callaghan and the bulk of the trade union leadership to challenge Britain's ancient status quo with a real alternative. It was the knavish, parliamentary tricks of the SNP to blame. And, thank goodness for the rest of us as we struggled through 10 years of Thatcherism, that at least the SNP were 'exposed.' This is coming from top leaders of the Labour Party. You could not make it up.

Looked at from both the point of view of the interests of the vast majority of the British people AND from the interests of the Labour Party, of course Labour should form a coalition government with the SNP if there is no majority on May 8. A new alliance with the present leadership of the Scottish people against austerity would have tremendous force in England and in Wales as well as Scotland. The combination of the social forces on the ground around such a political alliance would have the real potential to isolate the right in Britain and could start the process of revivifying the whole left. This is not a claim that the leadership of the Labour Party or the SNP would be able to deliver and anti-austerity policy or even could lead the fight for one. But mass action and a mass movement would feel energised, legitimated and able to demand anti-austerity measures from the government.

It is painfully obvious that if the Labour Party does not regroup, both politically and organisationally around anti-austerity, it has no independent purpose or future. It becomes part, a more and more minor part, of the politics of austerity. That, Jon Cruddas is right, is what happened in Greece and will happen in Spain. And, we might add, is leading to the political disaster that is coming in France.