Ten years on from the referendum on independence and twenty-five years on from the creation of the Scottish Parliament, we seem to be engaged in another endless cycle of political paralysis. Some may say it is but a case of ‘Tweedledee and Tweedledum’ since neo-liberalism took its hold in the late 1970s. Others may say, going back well before then: ‘Labour/Tories all the same – always play the bosses’ game’.

Before 1999, it was just the continuous cycle of Labour and Tories at Westminster as we were locked into a tight two-party system. At Holyrood since 1999, the Labour/Liberal Democrat domination has given way since 2007 to another binary of Labour/SNP as the primary political parties on offer.

The role of the LibDems as a major political party at Westminster from 2010 to 2015 – in a coalition government with the Tories – now seems as fleeting and distant as was their place in the Labour/LibDem coalition at Holyrood between 1999 and 2007.

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Until 4 July this year, it appeared that Labour was on course to form the government at the next scheduled Scottish Parliament election in May 2026 elections. But after something of a slump, the SNP might be yet saved by the growing unpopularity of Labour under Sir Keir Starmer, on the one hand, and the effective killing off of Alba following Alex Salmond's untimely death on the other. Salmond was simultaneously Alba’s greatest strength and weakness.

But the SNP is not quite out of the woods yet as its imploding relationship with the Scottish Greens might still allow Labour to emerge as the dominant party which could then form a minority or coalition government.

Whatever way the cards have fallen so far and will fall in the future, one elemental truth seems inescapable. This is that the radical left has failed to make a major challenge to this status quo of stasis. This is because it missed the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do so after the 2014 referendum.

After its very own ‘9/11’ (actually on 9 November in 2004), when Tommy Sheridan admitted to his party executive that which the News of the World had accused him of, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) began to implode in a fratricidal faction fight.

It seemed the ‘joy of six [MSPs]’ of 2003 was undone by the ‘joy of sex’. In 2007, no socialist SSP or Solidarity MSPs were returned to the Scottish Parliament. And yet the independence supporting radical left, by far the dominant part of the left in Scotland, was presented less than ten years later with an opportunity for both salvation and redemption in the form of the referendum campaign and the fallout of its subsequent outcome.

The first hopeful sign was that a small group of dedicated younger socialists, aware of but untainted by the aforementioned fratricidal faction fight, created the Radical Independence Campaign from an initial conference in 2012. They wanted to see a left-wing independent Scotland, not the capitalist ‘Celtic Tiger’ of Salmond and Sturgeon. In time, they created a much bigger and wider radical part of the independence movement.

Tommy Sheridan and then-girlfriend Gail Healey at the Scottish Parliamentary elections in May 1999Tommy Sheridan and then-girlfriend Gail Healey at the Scottish Parliamentary elections in May 1999 (Image: Newsquest Media Group) Sensing an opportunity post-referendum, they engaged in discussions with other parts of the independence-supporting radical left, initiating the Scottish Left Project on 12 October 2014. They consulted widely and, on 29 August 2015, launched RISE, standing for Respect, Independence, Socialism and Environmentalism. It aimed to be the Scottish Syriza and stood in the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections.

But RISE did not rise, gaining less than 1% of the votes cast. Even in the Glasgow list seat with its lead candidate, well-known activist Cat Boyd, RISE was beaten by Tommy Sheridan and soon thereafter collapsed. The Radical Independence Campaign itself also suffered the same fate of implosion not long afterwards. All that remains of the RISE initiative is the Conter website which is a sorry shadow of what was.

After being shut out of the official Yes campaign as result of his perjury conviction, Sheridan boosted his profile with his own ‘Hope not Fear’ mass meetings during the referendum campaign. But this did not translate into his return to Parliament for his then Solidarity party either. He spurned the opportunity to create a new party, as some of his supporters urged, and got his lowest vote ever standing for the Scottish Parliament. Solidarity also collapsed not long afterwards, with its remnants now being found in the Alba party.

Meantime, and though part of RISE for a while, the SSP never revived either. It did receive many hundreds of applications to join after 18 September 2014 but was unable to process these in time before people lost interest and many, many more disgruntled Yes voters streamed into the SNP and Scottish Greens.

All this indicated the radical left in Scotland was seen and is still seen as tainted and toxic after the Sheridan saga over his sex life. But in order to do more than merely rake over the coals of a sorry story, what are the lessons to be learnt for the radical left?

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The key one is that RISE was launched too quickly, without enough credibility and without having sufficient social roots, all of which came down to over-estimating the potential for a new post-SSP radical left political party to be launched.

By contrast, the SSP was launched in 1999 after more a decade of hard labour, starting with the fight against the poll tax in the late 1980s. In the case of the poll tax, the differences were that it was an active struggle in communities and not just a campaign, where people exercised their collective power by refusing to pay. And, of course, it was a victory too. Prior to the formation of the SSP, Scottish Militant Labour, then ably fronted by Sheridan, had widened out to create the Scottish Socialist Alliance in 1996.

So, to somewhat simultaneously bastardise the aphorisms attributed to philosopher, George Santayana, and politicians, Edmund Burke and Winston Churchill, ‘Those who do not learn the lessons of the past are destined and condemned to repeat them’. Unfortunately, this means that for well into the foreseeable future, and though the precise permutations may vary, the political cycle of bald binaries at Holyrood and Westminster will, alas, persist.

Professor Gregor Gall is a research associate at the University of Glasgow and editor of ‘A New Scotland: Building an Equal, Fair and Sustainable Society’ (Pluto Press, 2022).