United Kingdom
In reply to the discussion: Labour leapt into Brexit's fires - and now the party is burning [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)if it is ever to have any hope of governing the UK again-and it needs to be able to gain ground in Holyrood elections to have any chance of regaining Westminster seats.
I'm sympathetic to the case for Scottish independence, but I can't dismiss the fact that if Scotland did go independent, the rest of the UK would never elect another non-Tory government-it would have nothing but Cameron after May after Cameron after May for the rest of eternity. Change would be impossible in that situation.
Also, Scotland needs a REAL opposition, and the only kind of party that can do that is a party to the SNP's left.
A party that would be as anti-austerity in government as it is on the stump.
The LibDems can't be that party-they are still hated north of the Tweed for their coalition with Cameron.
The Scottish Greens can't manage it, either-they have discredited themselves as a left alternative by continually voting for the SNP's cuts, as the Irish Greens did when they propped up a right wing government in the Dail not so many years back.
The Tories are still the Tories up there, and always will be.
If I really had my druthers, I'd like to see an opposition that would be like a less-sectarian version of the SSP, radical but NOT specifically tied to support for independence. The SSP had real potential before Sheridan destroyed it with both his lies regarding his sordid personal life AND his insistence that the party defend him on his actions simply because he was the leader.
Scottish Labour needs to either radicalize or disband-it serves no purpose as a party that opposes Sturgeon from the right, and a party that refuses to support the one thing that could possibly make it electable again..."Devo Max".