Breaking: Kezia Dugdale steps down as Scottish Labour leader

[Ken Burch]

11. I agree with you on some points:

1) He actually should acknowledge that the SNP have done some good things in power. I think he will be freer to do that now that Dugdale's stood down-she was a sectarian Blairite and her vote as a member of the Labour NEC, a body to which her membership has always been somewhat in question-gave the anti-Corbyn right wing of the party a one-seat majority. If she s replaced by someone from the Scottish Labour Left, I suspect you'll see a different attitude on that.

2) As I said in OP, there should never have been a Labour pact with the Tories in Scotland-Labour had an obligation to try and regain at least some of the Scottish seats it lost, but not by inadvertently helping Theresa May's allies gain enough ground to cling to power with the support of the Ulster Homophobia Party(sorry, the DUP).

3) Labour shouldn't see the SNP as a greater menace than the Tories. The SNP might assist on this by taking independence off the immediate agenda-and focusing more on just being a progressive "good government" party-the Parti Quebecois, the Quebec equivalent to the SNP, has recently taken a step along this line, promising that it they are returned to power at the next Quebec election, the PQ will not call another independence referendum during its first term in office.

Labour should pledge that, of returned to office, it will increase Holyrood's powers. The Smith Commission was years ago, at the height of New Labour. I can understand your anger towards the party on that, but not so much towards Corbyn and where he's going with things now.

Here's a dilemma that Jeremy faces on Scotland:

It's going to be tough for any party to defeat the SNP at Westminster or Holyrood level, if you are the leader of Westminster Labour, can you really get away with essentially giving up on writing off an entire nation within the UK on the electoral level? Is he supposed to say "I'm never going to even try helping my party regain ground in one of its historic strongholds"? He needs to show some respect to the SNP's achievements, but at the same time he has responsibilities to his own party. My own suggestion would be that he and whoever leads Scottish Labour need to put the Scottish wing of the party, for the first time since Holyrood was created, to the left of the SNP.