"Would Labour become more radical and side wi...

2010-08-18T14:39:14.180+01:00

"Would Labour become more radical and side with the SNP on certain issues against the Conservatives or would they try to hold onto the Union at whatever cost and have to defend coalition decisions from time to time."

That's a very important question, but on all evidence up until now, Labour will try and scupper the SNP at every opportunity, cling on to the union at any cost, and to hell with the consequences for the people of Scotland. Scottish politics has been bitterly divisive in the past and will probably continue to be so for quite some time (probably until independence which removes the major fault line, after which some kind of consensus might emerge). I was talking to a Labour activist at the weekend who simply could not bring himself to admit the SNP had done anything good in the past 3 years or give them any sort of credit at all, not one single thing.

As for the current group of Labour MSPs I can't see this lot altering their behaviour any time soon, so unless there is a major change in personnel on the Labour side, with some of the more reasonable Labour people like Malcolm Chisholm being on the front bench as opposed to the nat-bashing whatever the issue people like Richard Baker, Andy Kerr, Jackie Baillie and Pauline McNeil change is unlikely any time in the near future. But then two of the more vocal nat-bashers, Lord Foulkes and Margaret Curran are offski next May, so there is always hope.

Of course this means having to defend Tory cuts which are coming as a result of the Westminster union whichever party was in power, but Labour and their media friends will find some way of shifting the blame as they always do.

Facing two directions at the same time and hypocrisy has never been a problem for Labour in the past, and they seem to take to doing this without any sense of unease whatsoever, it didn't seem to do them much harm in the 50-60 years they dominated Scottish politics.

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"Would Labour become more radical and side wi...