Politics: Independence: Labour isn’t dead yet

I disagree with them. Better Together was actually a well-run outfit, identifiably Labour-dominated, but hamstrung by the impotence of the Westminster political party leadership.

Indeed, I’d go as far as to say that the hand it played was deeply impressive given the cards it was dealt.

Using its inclusion of the Tories (who provided little more than the money) as a lingering bogey-man to explain Labour’s calamities is a convenient but lazy get-out clause for its leaders.

And although I find myself nodding in agreement with most of his beautifully written columns, I also respectfully disagree with Neil. It seems apt that, therefore, that my perspective sits in his space in The Herald while he enjoys some well earned Christmas time off.

I am not going to make an argument that Labour’s comeback is right around the corner, or that Richard Leonard should measure the curtains in Bute House. Clearly, neither of those things is the case; Labour will do well to hold onto 20+ seats in May’s Scottish Parliament election.

However I will seek to persuade readers that Labour has many of the fundamentals in its favour that could lead the party to power by the end of this decade. The first of those fundamentals is its position on Scotland’s omnipresent constitutional question.

Labour has found itself, over the six-and-a-bit years which have passed since 2014, detached from the debate. In this binary discourse, we are increasingly being encouraged to be either a Unionist or a Nationalist, with nothing in between. Both are represented by uncompromising actors – the Conservatives and the SNP. Neither has nuance; neither respects a middle ground.

Labour is neither one thing nor the other, in part because its voters straddle both sides of the divide (this year’s polling shows that only half of Labour’s voters are certain to vote No in a second independence referendum).

The party’s confused position has caused suffering at the ballot box, and will suffer again in May.

However, its new leader in London, Sir Keir Starmer, appears to be on a serious and thoughtful mission to create a new and enduring constitutional solution, and there will be a time, not too far away now, where it may be very attractive to the masses rather than just to a handful of constitutional geeks.

Starmer called for “radical economic and political devolution across the United Kingdom”, and correctly identified coronavirus as having brutally exposed the cracks in the current settlement, including the discombobulation caused by financial powers not having accompanied the administrative type.

There are as many names for this as there are people advocating it, but for the purposes of global comparison we are best served to call it federalism. It is often said that nobody knows what federalism is, and nor do they want it.

That may be true, but on Christmas Day in 2006 nobody knew what an iPhone was and nobody wanted it, yet a year later we all had one.

My point is that politics is about leadership; about deciding on the way forward and taking people with you, rather than constantly reacting, which has become a decades-long unionist disease. Polling conducted ahead of the first independence referendum, when the "middle option" was included, showed that option was consistently more popular than both independence and the status quo.

In other words, if you offer people the option, you may just find them welcoming the opportunity to remove themselves from the enforced binary choice. However, a proactive constitutional position is not enough.

Labour also needs to inhabit broadly the same ideological headspace as the bulk of the people – it’s the second fundamental. Under Starmer, and under Scotland’s "Starmerites", it just might. Much to the chagrin of the romantic red flag wavers, Jeremy Corbyn’s socialism was never going to be any more popular here than it was in England, or would have been anywhere else in Europe.

Precious few of us want to live in Venezuel-alba. But a European-style party of the centre left, embracing regulated free markets as the tool to lift strugglers out of poverty? Yes, that’s as popular now as it was when it swept Tony Blair to a landslide nearly a quarter of a century ago.

Then there is a third fundamental: timing. This is the most troublesome. Until the Scottish election is out of the way, the first fundamental – a constitutional position – is irrelevant. It will become relevant only when arguing that the referendum which is likely to follow that election should include a third option.

And the second fundamental – an ideological position – will only realise its full potential when the current social democrat incumbent, the SNP, is defenestrated either by losing another referendum, or, perversely, by winning it.

For Labour, though, (as well as for the Liberal Democrats who, as I have argued on these pages before, should be in alliance), it may be worth the wait. Last month’s Ipsos MORI polling for STV showed that, although Labour continued to trail the Conservatives in voting intention, they were handily ahead of them in trust ratings on everything from "standing up for Scotland" to running public services and the economy.

That matters. It indicates that many of Scotland’s newer Tory voters are crossing blue out of practicality rather than emotion. They are fluid; unreliable. It may even be fair to say they’d rather vote Labour, were it not for the presence of the constitutional monster.

One way or another, Scotland’s constitutional question is likely to be answered definitively in the next five years. After that answer is provided, everything changes. Every vote is up for grabs.

The Scottish Labour Party, in its current guise, is not equipped to seize the day. But Sir Keir presents them with a fairly clear route map to doing so. They’re not dead yet, Neil.

• Andy Maciver is Director of Message Matters

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