Viva la Scot Lab revolution
If you have been reading this blog recently, you might be aware of my bafflement at the ease with which some Scottish Lefties can switch back to Corbyn’s Labour.
It’s probably an age thing. Most of those drawn to Corbyn seem yet to have had their optimism crushed by a messianic political saviour making promises they will likely never deliver. I’ve got several of those t-shirts.
Repeated disappointments have led me to be more interested in changing the system than changing the personnel.
It’s mostly the system that stops well-meaning people from delivering. Nowadays, if you are not making a hard promise of constitutional change then I don’t really care what else you have to say. I know you won’t achieve half of it anyway and what you do achieve will be undone by the next lot that gets in.
Yet today I had a momentary optimism flashback.
I truly did briefly entertain the possibility that perhaps Scottish Labour might elect a new leader that didn’t just dismiss the desires of half the Scottish population.
I thought maybe there was a smidgen of a hope that Labour could choose someone who could remain open minded on the constitutional question. Unfortunately, such a candidate doesn’t exist. Alex Rowley has talked about remaining neutral on independence in the past but he has, perhaps wisely, withdrawn himself from the race.
While looking into the candidates to find one that might keep the independence door ajar, I did notice that the two favourites were privately educated. Both Anas Sarwar and Richard Leonard went to fee paying schools. Which is strange for potential leaders of the Scottish regional branch of Corbyn’s Socialist Republic of England.
However, on closer inspection, it’s not so strange at all.
Labour in Holyrood manages to have several times the number of privately educated MSPs as you would expect to find if they were actually representative of us plebs. Around 7 percent of the public go to private school but over 20 percent of Scottish Labour MSPs did.
Less strange still when you realise that a third of UK Labour MPs were privately educated including Corbyn himself. He and most of his shadow cabinet were recently humiliated for campaigning against selective education while sending their own children to those very institutions.
Anyway, these education stats don’t do much to untangle my confusion as to why some working class Scots are getting so excited about Labour again.
Like many Scots, I have a well justified Labour trust issue and this is just further evidence that they are not what they pretend to be. If they can’t even make their own party representative of those they profess to work for, then what chance have they got of changing society as a whole?
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