Letter from Scotland. When Keir Hardie founded the Scottish Labour Party in 1888, I don’t suppose he could have imagined how things would look this weekend when his party gathers in Glasgow for its annual conference.
by bottish
Letter from Scotland. When Keir Hardie founded the Scottish Labour Party in 1888, I don’t suppose he could have imagined how things would look this weekend when his party gathers in Glasgow for its annual conference.
by bottish
12 comments
> But where Scottish Labour most lacks courage is in its attacks on the SNP government. They usually involve calling for more public spending but without saying where that should come from. You get the feeling that Scottish Labour would like to end “austerity” by borrowing more or taxing more, but they daren’t say it out loud.
> Instead we got this week a promise of a “reset” of the relationship between government and business, whatever that may mean. And a suggestion from Gordon Brown’s “Future Scotland” think tank that we need an alternative to the council tax after the next election. But of course it’s not disclosed what that might be.
“What’s inside the mystery box” politics.
Lol at that thumbnail of Hardie.
The policies look closer to current SNP than current Labour!
Scottish Labour need to return to their roots – the 2026 manifesto must include Prohibition and Temperance Reform!
now the party of corrupt big business! what a fall from grace
>Home Rule since 1895
The potential jam tomorrow never-delivered promise labour keep spouting.
Still, at least when they got into power they abolished The House of Lords…..didn’t they??
Gordon Brown suggesting we need to reform council tax.
Imagine how awkward it would be if that was the same Gordon Brown who threatened the first SNP led Scottish Government with a £400m budget cut if they reformed council tax.
[https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/westminster-in-threat-to-withhold-ps400m-2480654](https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/westminster-in-threat-to-withhold-ps400m-2480654)
I do find this ‘The Founding Fathers of the Party are 100% correct for all time’ line a bit odd. No-one is suggesting the SNP should still to the platform of Alexander MacEwen for example.
Some people will never forgive the Labour Party for not *being able* to deliver everything they would aspire to. (Eg building homes for all requires the economy to be performing well enough to finance it, whatever the government)
However hasn’t the SNPs whole strategy in government been based on claiming not to *be able* to deliver everything they want to?
(Eg we would like to deliver new ferries, dual carriageways, a better nhs but we can’t due to prevailing economic conditions).
Out with the minority of hardcore “Indy or bust” zealots that will never forgive Labour for not agreeing with them in 2014 I suspect that most Scots recognise that Scotlands better off with a Labour government in Westminster than a Tory one.
If only Scottish Labour could form its own stance wrt to the views of Scottish citizens, then we could seriously consider them.
Currently, they’re simply a branch office for SirKeith and toe the line from the head office.
Certainly the interests of Scottish citizens seem far down their list of priorities.
He’d probably wonder why a plethora of smaller issues are higher up the bill than people being unable to afford homes and a lot of the people who have them can’t afford to heat them properly through the winter.
The may as well rebrand themselves under another name as they are so far removed from what the Labour Party was when they were formed.
Said it yesterday, if you had a time machine and went back just 30 years and showed people a list of the current Labour Party’s policies and asked them who they belonged to, I suspect you wouldn’t find a single person would get the correct answer.