My dominant memory of 12 December 2019 happened the next day. I met @shirkerism and others in Edinburgh to commiserate. We gathered at the Democracy Cairn on Calton Hill, which was a bit pretentious but cathartic as Scotland faced a Tory government and Brexit it didn’t vote for.

The Cairn was commemorates the Vigil for a Scottish Parliament that was held outside the Royal High School for several years after the 1992 ‘doomsday’ general election. I can remember passing their portacabin as a child when I was going up to Princess Street Gardens with my mum.

At the gathering we were mostly of the view that there was a lot that needed to be retained from the Corbyn experience. A radical social democratic programme had to be retained and climate change had to remain an urgent priority but we also needed much more emphasis on democracy.

Soon after I wrote an assessment of the election that emphasised it had to be understood in the context of long-term shifts in political culture and the fragmentation of labourism across Britain and its quite different replacements in Scotland and England. https://newsocialist.org.uk/unmaking-of-the-british-working-class/

That broad contention stands up. The long running changes that produced the ‘red wall’ collapse and redrawing of dominant readings of English political geography since suggest it cannot be put down to Corbyn, or even Brexit, alone, but Brexit is clearly centrally important.

The saltire was put on the Cairn out of long term frustrations too, including many that had developed during the Corbyn leadership. Labour’s at best dithering on Scottish democracy was attached to an insistence that all political questions could be answered on economic terms.

Being a semi insider, at least in the Scottish context, meant seeing even initiatives for democratic reforms that were developed within formal party or parliamentary structures deprioritised or more outright undermined over an almost 5 year period at Scottish and UK levels.

Frustratingly, things got no better when Richard Leonard became leader in a Scottish context. He had been someone associated with ‘radical federalism’ but as leader has been inclined to use that as a line to make it clear he wasn’t a Tory whilst not outlining a clear alternative.

One of the big developments since has been the debate over Welsh independence and an increasing demand for democratic reforms in England too. My view is Northern English regionalists, Welsh and Scottish nationalists and London devolutionists have a lot to gain from collaboration.

An important lesson in the 2019 election result for me was to sweep away any remaining naive inclinations that a mass party just had to present a radical programme to win. As someone from a Trot background in a Bennite inspired movement those sensibilities were rife around me!

I’ll end this self-indulgent thread by saying that means taking reactionary voters seriously. Tory voters knew what they were backing and the Tories must be assessed as the election’s winner as much as Labour are as its losers. As Brexit unfolds we’ll have to keep that in mind...