THREAD: Scotland.

There are many complex reasons for the catastrophic position which Scottish Labour finds itself in. Reasons which date back decades; and also reasons which are rather more recent.

They include:

- An arrogant, top down, contemptuous approach from New Labour

- Never treating devolution with the seriousness it deserved

- A breathtakingly tone deaf attitude to the independence movement: smearing progressives who just want self-determination as 'reactionaries'

- A never-ending succession of utterly horrendous, joke leaders.

Scottish Labour haven't had a decent leader since Donald Dewar. A number of them - notably Iain Gray, Johann Lamont (the worst of all in my book), Jim Murphy (second worst) and I'm afraid, Richard Leonard, have defied belief in their total ineffectiveness across the board.

To be quite frank, the UK Labour Party lacks talent... and the Scottish Labour Party has virtually none whatsoever. That's how, at a time when Scottish independence and Scottish self-determination has never been closer, Scottish Labour saw fit to elect... an English-born leader.

Try imagining ANY of the SNP, the Scottish Tories, even the Scottish Lib Dems, actually having as their leader someone raised in Yorkshire. It's preposterous.

But that is how monumentally clueless and tone deaf Scottish Labour truly are.

Was Leonard ever taken remotely seriously by the Scottish electorate? Nope. Why would he be?

Much of the SNP's success is based on it looking like, sounding like and prioritising the Scottish people. Leonard fell at the first hurdle on that, so never had any chance.

Under his watch, Scottish Labour fell the small, obviously unimportant matter of between THIRTY-FIVE and FORTY-FIVE points behind in the polls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2021_Scottish_Parliament_election

What an absolute, mindboggling disgrace.

Leonard was also hopelessly hamstrung by a party which:

1. Never had a clear position on Brexit despite Scotland voting to Remain, and Remain being the obviously progressive position

2. Had had an increasingly unclear position on independence AS WELL.

The two most important issues of the day - and Scottish Labour had no clear position on either. Unreal.

- If you're a Remainer and/or for independence, you'd vote SNP.

- If you're a Brexiteer and/or against independence, you'd vote Tory.

And if you're a progressive, why in the world would you vote Scottish Labour when you can vote SNP for a major political force instead?

The nonsense here is that Scottish Labour even still exists. It should've stood aside for the SNP years ago, as part of an electoral pact.

I first called for that pact in 2015. My view has only strengthened ever since. We need a progressive alliance - and we need to stop viewing the SNP as some enemy. It's disgraceful. https://web.archive.org/web/20190829060135/https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/how-to-stop-boris-labour-liberal-democrats-and-what-left-must-now-do/

None of this is to deny the slow deleterious impact of Blair and New Labour on Scotland. The country was treated with contempt; the 'branch office' was very much an appalling reality; Labour MPs completely lost touch with their constituents and took them for granted.

But here's the thing. When did calls for independence reach critical mass? When the Tories had taken office against the democratic will of the Scottish people. I've never considered that a coincidence.

Things were bad when Labour were in power. But nowhere near THIS bad.

And as Ed Miliband moved the Labour Party leftwards, what happened? His party became utterly hated, loathed in Scotland, as it stood alongside the Tories against independence.

Lest we forget, Labour has always been a unionist party and does not believe in nationalism.

Then Corbyn became Labour leader. Did this change Scottish Labour's fortunes? Other than an improvement in 2017 from a horribly low base, nope.

And Leonard? The socialist and anti-Blairite? Guess what: it's got even WORSE.

You cannot simultaneously argue that Scottish Labour's problems are, 100%, somehow all the fault of Tony Blair and then demand that utterly appalling failures as leaders stay in place because they're 'socialists'. It's nonsense.

Your first argument is, in effect, that it doesn't matter who the leader is. Fair enough: I broadly agree.

Your second argument then gives a free pass to socialists no matter how disastrously they do, and fulminates against their being replaced no matter how disastrously they do

The contempt that shows for the Scottish electorate, which made up its mind on Leonard a long, long time ago, is every bit as disgraceful as the contempt New Labour displayed.

It is pathetic tribal nonsense. Bald men fighting over a comb.

As to the donors refusing to support him? Good.

Why the hell would any donor give funds to a party which is between 35 and 45 points behind, and on the wrong side of history on not one, but BOTH major issues of the time?

And there is, in all this, a mounting absurdity which Twitter - never a place for nuance - constantly amplifies.

1. Tony Blair won 3 out of 3 elections. His predecessors won 0 out of 4, his successors won 0 out of 4. Yet he is blamed for absolutely everything under the sun.

2. Keir Starmer is level pegging with the Tories. Richard Leonard was between 35 and 45 points behind the SNP. So Twitter castigates Starmer every single day; and rushes in behind Leonard.

Absurd. Laughable. Politically innumerate, let alone illiterate.

The message this sends out is as follows:

a) We couldn't care less about Scottish public opinion. If someone calls themselves a 'socialist', we support them forever and ever.

b) We don't want to win. We prefer losing; we even prefer being completely annihilated.

The long and the short of it where Leonard was concerned is: like almost all his predecessors since Dewar, he was crap. Rubbish. Ludicrously out of his depth.

I don't support leaders who are THIS crap regardless of how 'nice' they are. Nobody should. Politics is about success.

The long and the short of it where Scottish Labour are concerned is: it is crap. Finished. It stands for nothing other than perpetual internecine conflict with people who should be its allies.

Stand down, form an electoral anti-Tory pact, and allow a second referendum.

It is a complete and utter irrelevance no matter who its leader is: whether they're a socialist, a Blairite, or someone in between.

And we are way, way past time for the UK Labour Party to cut it loose and allow it to be completely independent.

Corbyn didn't do so. That's a black mark against him.

Starmer hasn't done so either. That's a black mark against him too.

You cannot claim to be taking devolution seriously while STILL controlling Scottish Labour from London. The Scottish people rightly see straight through it.