Labour in turmoil as Lamont resigns

SCOTTISH Labour are in turmoil this morning after Johann Lamont ended weeks of speculation about her political future and resigned as leader.

Peter A Bell's insight:

All I can take from this is confirmation that British Labour in Scotland is as oblivious of its own parlous state and dire failings as the rest us us already knew it was. Lamont and her supporters appear to genuinely believe that she achieved something in the last three years other than being an embarrassment to herself, her party, the Scottish Parliament and the Nation.

Meanwhile, the real party leaders in London are so detached from reality that they imagine getting rid of Lamont is all it will take to change the party’s fortunes in Scotland. They actually suppose that some cosmetic changes will suffice to turn around a party that is in terminal decline - trusted by virtually nobody in Scotland.

The fact that the odious Jim Murphy is even being considered as Lamont’s replacement tells us all we need to know about the extent to which British Labour in Scotland is out of touch with the political pulse of the nation, looking determinedly inward as if to avoid the sight of the generalised contempt in which the party is now held. Murphy’s appeal is, not to the people who have turned their backs on “Scottish” Labour, but to the party’s Westminster elite.

As ever, no thought is given to Scotland’s needs and priorities. Murphy is a British politician. He is the property of British Labour and the British establishment. He is, in the eyes of the British state, a safe pair of hands dedicated to preserving existing structures of power and privilege at a time when the people of Scotland are increasingly demanding that those structures be dismantled.

There is no redemption for “Scottish” Labour so long as it remains, in reality, a mere offshoot of “London” Labour. As much as Scotland needs to bring its government home, it needs political parties which truly represent the people of Scotland. Parties that we can trust. Parties that we can be confident will put the interests of Scotland’s people above those of of the British state and its ruling elites. British Labour in Scotland not only fails to meet these criteria, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that it ever could.

See on heraldscotland.com



via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1tSZHsA