Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD BOY
Which you would have thought would have resulted in more effort being put into winning Scottish seats. Unfortunately for them, Labour has lost its way. They need to find some more imaginative, positive minded and engaging people if they are to drag themselves out of this political mud.
|
Labour doesn’t know how to win seats in Scotland because it spent decades taking those it held for granted. It used to be said that the Labour vote in North Lanarkshire (lots of coal and steel) was weighed, rather than counted. The party grew complacent on an epic scale, and when the SNP became adept at articulating a centre-left message (historically Scottish independence was the hobby of middle classes, mostly in the north and north east, with time on their hands) the Labour vote began to wobble. The Yes (overwhelmingly SNP) campaign in 2014 hitched that centre-left message to a means of policy delivery that depended on independence. That is effectively now the status quo in Scottish politics. I happen to think this state of affairs lacks depth of conviction; once you strip away the woad-wearing, flag-waving lunacy there are just lots of working class (and workless class) voters in west-central and east Scotland who have been persuaded that their route to free stuff depends on separatism. This position is wide open to challenge, and the Tories have made some progress, but to really turn the tide against the Nats, Labour is going to have to find its voice. Whether it can do that in the next 8 months remains to be seen.