Scottish Labour have finally learned the lessons of two decades of defeats and realised what they need is another soul-crushing machine politician from Lanarkshire that no-one has ever heard of. Better late than never. https://t.co/4i1D5Labcq
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) August 16, 2026
I'm sure all of us sometimes make exaggerated or over-simplified criticisms of unionist organisations for partisan reasons, but I really do feel the sentiment in the tweet above is 100% fair comment. Quite literally the more Scottish Labour fail, the less they seem to learn. I sometimes wonder if Labour constantly think back to the 'good old days' when Scottish people would vote for anything in a red rosette and assume that means soul-crushing machine politicians from Lanarkshire are actually incredibly popular, and that the voters are just having an inexplicably prolonged break from following their natural desires.
A bigger issue is perhaps that Scottish Labour's branch office status prevents them from taking any action to solve the problem even if they ever get to the point of correctly identifying it. When UK Labour lose to the Tories, they generally move a bit to the right to win voters back from the Tories, just as David Cameron moved the Tories a bit to the left to win voters back from Labour. But when Scottish Labour lose to the SNP, they can't take the logical step of meeting the voters they've lost to the SNP halfway, because their bosses in London won't let them do that "for the greater UK good". So instead all they've got left is to pathetically beg SNP voters to "please stop caring about that thing you really care about, we're going to do the total opposite of what you want but please just vote for us anyway", and wonder why that doesn't work any better on the fifth attempt than it did on the first. Having said that, it did kind of work as a one-off in 2024 due to special circumstances, which is the worst thing that could possibly have happened to Labour because they'll now be even more baffled when it doesn't work again.
I always say that every election in which the SNP shy away from the de facto referendum route to winning independence is just a monumental waste of time, because it doesn't really create an alternative way forward, it just postpones the inevitable. A de facto ref is the only viable option, and that penny will inevitably drop eventually, so it's just a question of how many years or decades we waste before arriving at that unavoidable destination. In precisely the same way, every election in which Labour run away from finally making their peace with Yes supporters simply delays any chance of a Labour comeback, because making their peace with Yes supporters is the only way a comeback is possible and they'll inevitably reach that conclusion at some point. It's not inconceivable that Monica Lennon could have successfully reached out to Yes voters, but it is totally inconceivable that Joe Fagan or Michael Marra will, so the way things are shaping up Labour will just end up wasting yet another five years.
What would Labour making its peace with Yes-voting Scotland look like? It wouldn't look like Labour becoming a pro-indy party, but it probably would mean them coming up with a credible and concrete answer to the perfectly reasonable question: "if the UK is a voluntary union, how does Scotland leave if it wants to?" Their answer wouldn't necessarily have to resemble the one that pro-indy parties would want - it could be a fresh solution that addresses any concerns Labour themselves have about exercises in self-determinations, assuming that any of those concerns are not totally bogus. If they genuinely believe that 2014-style referendums are too disruptive, for example, they could simply stipulate themselves that any mandate should be sought in a scheduled election, and that whether pro-indy parties win more than 50% of the vote in combination would be the test of success or failure. It's quite a challenging threshold for the Yes side, after all, so why fear it if you truly believe that Scots aren't that fussed about indy?
The bottom line is, though, that Scottish Labour will have to painfully come to terms with something that Northern Ireland unionists came to terms with nearly three decades ago when they signed the Good Friday Agreement - ie. that the territory they live in will henceforth have the right and the ability to choose to leave the UK in practice and not just in theory.
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This is Post 3 of "Seven Days of Retro Scot Goes Pop" - a shameless gimmick in which I attempt to solve this blog's funding problems in the space of a week with a conventional text-blogging marathon to help promote my Ko-Fi donations page, during which period pre-moderation in the comments section will be switched off. My target for the week is to either get up to 60 regular monthly supporters on Ko-Fi (as of this evening I have 19), or to reach £1500 in one-off donations to the page, or some sort of combination of a bit of both. In an equally shameless attempt to coax KC's stinking rich Tory landowner chums in Surrey into helping to fund Scot Goes Pop, I have pledged to try to leave pre-moderation switched off even after the seven days are over, but only if at least one of the targets is met in full. Yes, it's time to play hardball with our resident "Nessie" enthusiast.
If you might be interested in making either a small recurring monthly donation or a one-off donation, please check out my Ko-Fi page HERE.
