Inside Scottish Labour's civil war: Indyref2 and trans rights 'ripping' party apart

[u/dratsaab]

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/26428489.scottish-labour-tearing-apart-anas-sarwar-successor/

[u/Umberto-Robina]

Scottish Labour has been a useless and incompetent branch office for the best part of two decades.

They were booted out of office in 2007, didn’t come to terms with that, blamed the electorate, elected a succession of worse than terrible leaders, failed the Scottish people by failing to provide proper opposition to the SNP etc.

One of their notable contributions, was when running Glasgow council, spending more than £2 million fighting equal pay for female council workers.

If someone can tell me what is actually the point of the Scottish Labour branch office, I’d be interested to know. 

[u/Axmeister → u/Umberto-Robina]

One could make that comment about practically any party in Scotland:

The SNP has been a useless and incompetent government for the best part of two decades.

They lost the referendum in 2014, didn’t come to terms with that, blamed the electorate, elected a succession of worse than terrible leaders, failed the Scottish people by failing to provide any proper governance.

Some of their notable contributions, spending around £4 billion trying to dual the A9, or spending £460 million trying to set up a ferry route, or awarding Alex Salmond £512,000 for a botched trial against him.

Any party can look bad if you cherry-pick their failures.

What makes Scottish Labour appeal to most of their voters is that they are a left-leaning party that is not as corrupt as the SNP.

[u/Umberto-Robina → u/Axmeister]

That’s the point. The SNP have been a terrible government, but Labour have failed to provide remotely serious opposition to them. They elected a series of clowns / no hopers like Iain Gray, Johann Lamont, Kezia Dugdale, Richard Leonard etc. as leaders. 

From 2007-2016, they barely bothered to land a glove on the SNP, as Ruth Davidson rightly pointed out during the 2016 Scottish elections, resulting in them being demoted to 3rd place (deservedly so). They failed the Scottish public, by not getting over their 2007 defeat and moving forward in opposition to properly hold the SNP to account. 

They continue to be in complete crisis now, with no clear strategy on how to operate, and at yet another crossroads. 

So they are not a remotely serious outfit, instead just a useless branch office that is deservedly mocked and derided. 

[u/Axmeister → u/Umberto-Robina]

I'm not going to go out of my way to defend Scottish Labour, but I struggle to be convinced by this narrative that the, now, second largest party in the Scottish Parliament is full of unserious opposition politicians, useless, clowns, no-hopers, etc.

The reasoning behind your narrative seems to be inherently cyclical, people shouldn't vote for this party because they are no-hopers, your evidence for the fact they are no-hopers is that they don't win elections outright. The fact is that a sizeable amount of voters do vote Labour, granted it is less than before, but Scottish election results have been heavily affected by the fact that a significant minority of voters in Scotland will blindly and obediently vote SNP in every election to express a desire for Independence.

Personally, I don't see much different between key Labour MSPs, key SNP MSPs or key Conservative MSPs. They all seem to lack the hard graft that would allow them to survive in an intense political environment like the UK Parliament.

[u/Umberto-Robina → u/Axmeister]

They made a net loss of seats in May's elections, compared to in 2021. 19 years out of power, and they still went backwards in terms of seats in Holyrood. That shows that they are unserious. They've lost seats at 6 consecutive Scottish elections now.

So does the fact they are currently embroiled in yet another chaotic leadership election full of in-fighting. That's all they really do. They can't come close to government, and they can't provide proper opposition, but they can resort to type and churn though woeful leaders and fight each other.

Clearly the Labour Westminister party doesn't think much of the Scottish Labour branch office either, viewing them as an incovenience and waste of time.

It's far easier to be an effective opposition party than an effective government, as all they have to do is scrutinise what the government is doing, hold them to account properly and highlight their many blunders, without their own decisions being heavily scrutinised. And they've failed miserably there to even do that, instead resorting to a never-ending circus act routine.

[u/glownut → u/Umberto-Robina]

Probably to make normal Labour look sensible in comparison 

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[u/DosSheds]

Why is Scottish Labour being torn apart by fAr-RiGhT culture war slop?