The apparent favourite for the leadership of Scottish New Labour is a Blairite named Iain Gray. He has come out in his true blue true colours by suggesting that Scottish New Labour need to cooperate with the Scottish Conservatives in the Scottish Parliament.
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Labour-could-team-up-with.4399354.jp
It says volumes for the despair of the numptie party that they think being associated with the Scottish Conservatives would actually increase their popularity in Scotland. But it also is but the simple confirmation of the truth of British politics today. In Scotland, New Labour and the Tories have teamed up against the SNP in local government in Dundee and elsewhere, determined to cling to the old order. Economically there is little difference between New Labour and Tory, while the Tory party is slightly more liberal in social and legal matters.
New Labour and Tory both support the illegal invasion of Iraq; they both support breaking the Non Proliferation Treaty by acquiring a massively destructive and ruinously expensive new nuclear missile system, thus further fuelling Russian paranioa and aggression; they both support making public services more expensive and allowing huge private profits from them through the Private Finance Initiative. I can think of no reason any New Labour supporter should not vote Tory, except for New Labour’s greater emphasis on attacking civil liberties.
Craig
You are too generous to NuLabour.
They are a long way to the right of the Tories these days. And they are not "slightly more liberal on social and legal matters". 42 days?
I know it doesn't affect Scotland (I think if I had school age children I'd move there) but listening to Andrew Adonis today on the subject of "failing schools" made me even more determined than ever never to vote for them again.
I agree with Craig. I really don't see that there are real substantive differences between the two leading parties in Westminster or anywhere else.
Now this idea, that the Conservatives and New Labour are really two rival factions of the same basic party, was once the preserve of the ultra-left, but it's clearly become far more widespread in recent years. Is this inevitable as they both move towards the "centre" and strive to appeal to the same marginal seats, or does it represent a structural change in British politics?
If the major partis are "merging", for example; Labour supports the free market capitalism, and the Conservatives support the welfare state; and both of them agree on foreign policy and Britain's role as a loyal, subserviant ally of the United States, then this has important implications for character of democracy in Britain.
It appears to mean, that at Westminster, there is no real, substantial or effective opposition, apart from a handful of independents who don't really count. Without an opposition what happens to the voters right to choose? Can one even have real democracy in a de facto one party state?
The Scottish Tories need to show some independence from London. They need to show that they are *Scottish* Tories, not simply poodles of Cameron and his NeoCon claque.
There was a suggestion that they ought to embrace Independence for Scotland (within or outwith the Union needs to be debated) and provide a real alternative to the SNP who would swap a Westminster master for a Brussels one.
Teaming up with Labour – a party on its way out into the wilderness in Scotland – would be the stupidest move they could possibly make: so the chances of that Blair-clone Cameron ordering them to do so are quite high.