Ed Miliband would do well to start fighting with 'every fibre of his being' in Scotland.
Ed Miliband would do well to start fighting with ‘every fibre of his being’ in Scotland
Labour’s recent worries will be compounded by news that the SNP’s membership surge has been especially felt across Labour’s West of Scotland heartlands.
Total SNP membership now stands at around 80,000 as of last week – a threefold increase since the independence referendum, making it the third largest political party in the United Kingdom.
However, the Herald has reported that over the same period, Glasgow, once dubbed ‘Red Clydeside’, has seen a five-fold increase in membership, building on the city’s rejection of Labour’s pleas for it to vote to stay in the Union.
In Motherwell and Coatbridge, the membership surge has seen a six fold rise in membership of the SNP.
In contrast, it is thought that Labour’s membership north of the border as slumped, with the Herald noting:
“As recently as 1998, Labour had almost 31,000 members in Scotland but 10 years later this had fallen to around 17,000 and the party stopped reporting figures. It is now believed to have dropped to below 13,000 and the SNP surge may well hasten that decline.”
Such figures will sound alarm bells ringing in Labour circles, with the very probable spectre that election night next May will see Labour loosing seats to the nationalists. As YouGov’s polling published today shows, support for the SNP in Scotland now stands at 45 per cent way ahead of the 28 per cent polled for Labour.
Meanwhile, it was reported over the weekend that at a gathering this Saturday at Strathclyde University, a group of Labour figures, including former senior spin doctor for Scottish Labour Andrew Mcfadyen, will propose sweeping changes to the party in Scotland, including changing its name, supporting sweeping new powers for Holyrood and refusing to work with the Conservatives in any future independence referendum.
The Sunday Herald’s investigations editor Paul Hutcheon has written:
“The prospectus, to be aired at Strathclyde University this week, notes that the referendum represented ‘an extraordinary political awakening’ in Scotland.
“It claims the risks of independence advanced by Better Together ‘sounded thin to those who have little to risk’ and urged Labour to set out a ‘radical agenda for home rule in the 21st century’.
“The activists’ statement calls for Labour to ‘assert Scotland’s right to self-determination’ and back the devolution of welfare powers, broadcasting, all income tax and ‘substantial economic and industrial’ levers.
“It also urges a policy of ‘non co-operation’ with the Tories if another independence referendum is called.
“In addition, the statement calls for the Scottish party to be ‘fully autonomous’ from UK Labour and equipped with the power to appoint its full-time officials and write its own constitution.
“More radically, the activists urge ‘consideration’ of changing the party’s name to the Independent Labour Party (ILP). The original ILP was formed in 1893 by Labour icon Keir Hardie.”
With Ed Miliband having told the Parliamentary Labour Party last night that he intended to “fight with every fibre” of his being to win the next general election, he would do well to start with Scotland, and work to reconnect Labour with those traditional heartland voters who have grown disillusioned by the Oxbridge elite that makes it difficult to distinguish Labour from the upper echelons of the Conservative party.
Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
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11 Responses to “Labour’s Scottish headache continues”
Julia
I may have remained a Labour Party member if they had followed these proposed changes. Labour for Independence gained significant support due to the rigid outdated policies employed by the current leadership in Scotland.
Alistair Sheehy Hutton
Yes, Scottish subsamples of National polls are basically completely ignorable. Only Scotland specific polling has any relevance.
The_Average_Joe_UK
So if I’ve got that right, what you’re saying is that the West Lothian Question as proposed by a Labour MP; universally recognised by all across the political spectrum, including the Labour party and lethal to lefty Labour; doesn’t exist. … and you’re a hard core Labourite ….. and you want me to take you seriously.
This ladies and gentlemen sums up the reason why British politics is in such a mess. People think they can tell te biggest howlers in the world and expect the majority to believe it.
Jim Bennett
Rather a disappointing article.
The movement of many of the poorest and those in working class areas towards Scottish Independence requires a much more sober analysis than what is talked about here. Primarily, the Labour party under Blair and Brown cosied up to big business, failed to regulate the banks, attacked the poor via welfare cuts, followed a privatisation agenda and launched a series of illegal wars. Through their period in government, Labour proved that the interests of the poor and working class did not coincide with their interests. Privately educated Oxbridge Labour had more in common with the Tories than it did with ordinary people in Scotland.
Against that background, the rise of the SNP shouldn’t have been that surprising. The SNP present as a youthful, mainstream social democratic party, frankly not that different from a traditional Labour Party, but with the ability to identify themselves as defending the interests of Scots against the rampages of the British state. On he other hand, Labour in Scotland is populated by dinosaurs apparently intent on maintaining their careers and incapable of making a distinctive agenda from the British Labour Party. The Labour Party’s agenda has often been indistinguishable from that of the Tories – a race to the bottom in attacks on benefit claimants and using the poorest to pay for the errors they made in government.
The modest changes proposed above won’t take the Labour Party in Scotland very far. What is needed is a radical policy shift which offers a substantially distinctive Scottish social democratic programme which is actually based on positive social change.
David Lindsay
universally recognised by all across the political spectrum, including the Labour party and lethal to lefty Labour
It is neither of those things.
In fact, anyone with any serious knowledge of the field denies both of those propositions outright: that it exists, and that it would damage Labour even if it did.
Both are Home Counties golf club bar drivel, the only thing that the Tories have left, and the only thing that UKIP has ever had.