Breaking: Kezia Dugdale steps down as Scottish Labour leader

[Denzil_DC]

22. Dude, I'm not going to respond to your post above this one

Last edited Sun Sep 3, 2017, 10:24 AM - Edit history (2)

because there are so many hours in the day and all I'm seeing yet again is Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy and what Labour needs, and quite frankly I'm beyond tired of the whole pantomime when we have so many pressing issues that it's taking time and energy away from.

You excuse Corbyn for having his hands tied when he doesn't choose to acknowledge how a party in actual power has its hands tied. Make excuses for him and Labour's confused state all you will, I'm not impressed. Your assertion that "nobody could be more decentralist" than Corbyn is utterly lacking in concrete evidence.

On this post of yours, while it had its 56 SNP MPs (latterly 54), Scotland at least had effective representation at Westminster and gave the government a serious run for its money while Labour under Corbyn was agonizing about itself and sitting on its hands, abstaining or even supporting the Tories' legislation - a lot more current that anything that happened 40 years ago. Other Labour MPs, despite tribalism, were perturbed at how useless and self-preoccupied and careerist the previous bevy of Labour Scottish MPs had been.

But this is the most arrant bullshit you've come out with yet:

And I think that, while left-wing Scots have ample reason to dislike what UK Labour has often done on Scottish issues since 1974, Labour, virtually every working class or poor voter in Britain has one long-standing reason to distrust or resent the SNP:

The party's decision to support the Tory-introduced no-confidence motion against the Callaghan government in 1979.

Do you know who would have disagreed with you? Jim Callaghan himself.

The history's too long and complicated (and depressing) to relate here (as usual, a cheap one-sentence soundbite takes a lot more words to unravel), and I can't quote enough to make sense without falling foul of DU's fair usage rules, so here's a summary: https://wingsoverscotland.com/36-years-of-discontent/

Callaghan had the guts in retrospect to place the blame firmly at Labour's door. By refusing to make any concessions to the SNP (not least the result of having been hemmed in by circumstances, his own pigheadedness and the plotters in his own party), he basically defied the SNP MPs to vote against him. That was a very bad bet. The SNP could have folded and lost any credibility, or voted as it did.

Anybody who was alive in the UK at the time knows how much of a mess Callaghan's government was in. It was no fun huddled in the dark trying to study by candlelight in the latter part of the 20th century, and that was the least of the problems.

There would have had to be an election by the autumn of 1979 anyway, and Callaghan himself wasn't keen on waiting that long to go to the polls because Labour's support was in a continuous downward spin, as the Tories' vast majority at the election that did happen showed. It would quite possibly have been an even worse result if the election had been postponed.

Nevertheless, the SNP did use those circumstances and the consequences of its 11 votes (out of 311) to take a leftward turn under Salmond (thereby starting the process that eventually - quite recently - saw the likes of me feeling comfortable giving them my vote), which with a few glitches has continued to this day. It learned a lesson. I don't think Labour has, because this ahistorical tripe keeps getting trotted out as a justification for opposing policies that actually benefit people today.

To have to reach back 40 years for such a cause of resentment says it all about Labour and people like you who buy into the propaganda (the very fact you bring it up makes me want to suggest you find some better, less hopelessly partisan, sources of information on Scottish politics, then we might not be at loggerheads so often). The fact that so many Labour supporters and members have defected to the SNP is testimony to its irrelevance and redundancy.

The 40% rule could be held up as the root act of betrayal (and a particularly useless one given what happened about devolution later). I wasn't paying much attention to politics at the time, but I remember being outraged by it even as a teenager living in Wales. As Callaghan himself wrote:

{The rule} was instigated by another Labour sceptic, George Cunninghame {sic}, with the support of Labour and Conservative opponents. He proposed that if the consultative referendum contained in the bill resulted in less than 40 per cent of the total electorate voting in favour of Devolution, then the Secretary of State for Scotland would be required to lay an Order before Parliament, wiping out the whole Act.

This provision was carried by a majority of fifteen, with as many as thirty-four Labour Members voting against the Government. On the other hand a small number of Conservatives and the Liberal Party supported us.

I have since wondered whether those thirty-four Labour Members would have voted as they did if they had been able to foresee that their votes on that evening would precipitate a General Election in 1979, at the least favourable time for their Government.

But there have been plenty other outrages since that give a more current focus for anger.