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Miliband and Murphy must apologise for ‘Better Together’

scottish-independenceIt is clearer this morning than it has ever been. Lord Ashworth’s polls leave us in no doubt that the threat to Labour from the SNP that has been forecast by other polls is very real. If Labour loses this election, it will have lost it primarily in Scotland. Douglas Alexander and Margaret Curran stand to lose their seats, and whilst this may be some justice for their failure to recognise the danger of cooperating with the Tories in Better Together, and to alert Ed Miliband to it, the Scottish people do not deserve the consequence which would be a Tory-led government.

Ed Miliband may not have been primarily responsible for the decision to participate in Better Together but the buck stops wit him. And he must apologise for it. It was never right to cooperate with the Tories. Labour’s reasons for opposing the nationalists arguments for independence were never the same as the Tories’, or should never have been so. The apology is long overdue.

Jim Murphy must apologise too. He may have cannily avoided sharing a platform himself with the Tories during the referendum campaign, but he relied on the Better Together campaign team to promote his “100 Towns, 100 Days” tour which was in reality the start of his leadership campaign, he relied on most of them to run his leadership campaign and he appointed its director as Scottish Labour’s head of policy.

The Left and the trade unions in Scotland never supported being part of Better Together but their advice was unwisely ignored. A year after Labour beat the SNP in Glasgow in the Euro elections, it now faces a near wipe out in Sctoland’s largest city and Labour’s traditional stronghold. Labour cannot begin to recapture working class votes in Scotland until it apologises for its colossal mistake.

 

16 Comments

  1. Robert says:

    Apologising is not good enough, it does nothing to give back a labour party. You can apologise all you like the fact is this labour party is not socialist it’s not even pretending to be.

    Blue labour Purple labour the one thing it’s not is red labour.

    I worked most of my life in Scotland and I love the place and to be honest its no surprise the SNP have taken the place, Labour thought it could be come a copy of the Tories, and take with it working people not working class, sadly those in Scotland will have family members who are not working who are sick disabled and poor .

    I’m not Red Ed, well we can see that now but we have enough Tories, what we do need is somebody who is red not Blue or Purple.

    So perhaps after this election we may well see parties deciding to move up to take labour place, then labour will struggle and become the liberals.

    1. Mukkinese says:

      I really tire of this “Red Tory” nonsense.

      1. Labour will build 200,000 by 2020, focusing on social housing.

      2. Labour will create a State-Owned Rail Company that would compete and win back Rail Franchises.

      3. Labour will cut business rates for small firms.

      4. Labour will introduce an increased Bankers’ Bonus Tax if they win in 2015.

      5. Labour promised Free Childcare worth £5,000 a year for working parents who had children aged 3&4.

      6. Labour will sack ATOS, Serco and G4S if they win the election.

      7. Ed Miliband will repeal the Bedroom Tax.

      8. Ed Balls will reverse the Pension Tax relief that the Tories gifted to millionaires.

      9. Labour will reverse the Tory Tax cut for Hedge Funds.

      10. Labour will create 200,000 Apprenticeships

      11. Ed Miliband will increase the fine levied on firms not paying the Minimum Wage by 1000% to £50,000.

      12. Labour will introduce a new Disability Hate Crime Prevention Law.

      13. Labour will freeze gas and electricity bills for every home and business in the UK for at least 20 months, the big energy firms would be split up and governed by a new tougher regulator to end overcharging.

      14. Voting age will be lowered to 16.

      15. NHS will be re-nationalised.

      16. Miliband said that any private company that does not meet the needs of the public will be brought under state control.

      17. Labour will ban exploitative zero hour contracts.

      18. Labour will introduce a living wage.

      19. Labour will reverse the £107,000 tax break that the Tories have given to the millionaires.

      20. Labour will reintroduce the 50p tax.

      21. Labour will repeal clause 119.

      22. Labour will introduce a law making Private Companies subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

      23. Labour will introduce a Mansion Tax on properties worth more than £2 million

      24. Labour will make up the difference to the value in the minimum wage is restored, reversing the Tory cut of 5%.

      25. Labour will halt Michael Gove’s Free School Expansion Programme.

      26. Labour will abolish the Tory ban on Local Education Authorities opening State Schools once more.

      27. Labour will scrap George Osborne’s “Shares for Rights” scheme that has opened up a tax loophole of £1 billion .

      28. Labour will launch a full public inquiry into blacklisting.

      29. Labour will ensure Water Companies place the poorest households on a Social Tariff that makes it easier for them to pay their Water Bills.

      30. Labour will double the tax duty on Pay Day Lenders and will use the additional £13,000,000 that raises to help foster more Credit Unions.

      31. Labour will impose a cap on the cost of credit, setting a limit at which Pay Day Lenders can charge borrowers.

      32. Labour will regulate food labelling to simplify pricing so that Supermarkets cannot con customers.

      33. Labour will introduce a Bill that would ban Recruitment Consultancy firms from only hiring abroad & ban firms from paying temporary workers less than permanent staff.

      34. Labour will set up a Financial Crime Unit, with increased staffing, in the Serious Fraud Office to enable the SFO to pursue bankers who break the law.

      35. Labour will break up the banks, separating retail banking from investment banking.

      36. Labour will scrap Police Commissioners.

      37. Labour will introduce a Forces & Veterans Bill of Rights to build upon the Military Covenant.

      38. As a minimum measure, Labour will at least cut Tuition Fees by 33%.

      39. Labour will introduce measures to prevent corporate tax avoidance.

      40. Labour will also increase the Bank Levy by £800m a year.

      41. Labour will scrap the Profit Tax Cut (Corporation Tax) that George Osborne has already announced for 2015.

      42. Labour will scrap Cameron’s “Gagging” Act.

      43. Labour will ensure all MPs will be banned from receiving any income from corporations after 2015.

      44. Labour will tackle the abuse and exploitation of migrant labour that undercuts wages.

      45. Labour will extend their 2002 public interest test to protect us from exploitative multinational takeovers.

      46. Labour will end unpaid workfare

      47. Labour will scrap sanction targets.

      So if you are going to let the tories back into Downing street by the backdoor, stop making silly excuses…

      1. Robert says:

        Yes all that sounds so so nice but after 13 years of Labour we now have all these promise, you say Affordable houses are social houses that’s not what I see. and all the rest is just hot air.

        None of that gives us the answers we all need to know the deficit…

  2. David Ellis says:

    Scottish Labour are royally Pasoked. They could still recover if they embraced independence and put forward a radical programme for the transition to working class power and socialism but then they wouldn’t be Scottish Labour handmaidens to British imperialism.

    It has to be said though that the `radical left’ in Scotland are failing the youth and workers energised by the recent Yes Campaign in that they are not putting forward a revolutionary alternative to the SNP’s woolly populism now that New Labour are defunct. The sects are congenitally incapable of putting forward a programme and end up in opportunist relations with reformists and populists. Come on let’s put some socialist meat on the bones of independence.

  3. John reid says:

    It wasn’t all labour who were peo the Union, Frank Field wanted to campaign for Scotland to leave, eint see the problem,with being in a stage with a tories, as a person who was against AV, but Pro proportional representation, my friend Emily Thornberry and Mr, with the likes of Dennis Skinner mwere in the same side as the a toeies in that, ironically, the atories with the Ukip vote would have done better at the next election if they had been pro AV

  4. Rod says:

    They can apologise for Falkirk while they’re at it.

    But there’ll be no apologies. They won’t even realise they’ve done something deserving apology.

    Just leave them to become the LibDems Mk2. The rest of us can get one with building a real opposition to the out-of-touch, pro-corporate Westminster elite.

  5. swatantra says:

    Why must they apologise? Aren’t we allowed to have a difference of opinion in the Labour Party?
    As long as we agree on the main values and principles surely that is ok?

    1. Rod says:

      It would be as an apology for the Iraq disaster – an acknowledgement that mistakes have been made, of regretting those mistakes and an indication that they are prepared to learn therefrom.

      But, as with the Iraq disaster, we won’t get an apology.

      1. swatantra says:

        I’ve got a feeling that when Chillcott eventually comes out Tony will be hauled before the International Court of HR in the Hague to explain himself; and George W.
        But there’s also our ‘adventures’ in the Balkans which also led to thousands of deaths but apparently NO genocide according to the Court.
        Honestly, we have morons in our Foreign Office who have no idea of the world at all. Jump in and make the situation worse is their motto.

        1. Robert says:

          We have morons who wanted to be MP’s

          1. swatantra says:

            I’d call them oxymorons.
            Better them than some individuals who simply cannot decide where they stand in the political spectrum, like ex-Labour who vote UKIP or SNP and still claim to be socialists!!!

  6. Chris says:

    No regrets.

    It was worth working with the Tories to save our country from its enemies.

    You wanna vote SNP now? Make my day, loser. You’ve already lost.

  7. Robert says:

    If I was in Scotland I not only be voting I’d be a member.the SNP are more to the left this labour

  8. Chris says:

    The SNP want to destroy our country. Is that not more important than a mere question of left and right? Damn, I’d happily ally with UKIP against them.

  9. Oscar says:

    “The SNP want to destroy our country. Is that not more important than a mere question of left and right? Damn, I’d happily ally with UKIP against them.”

    You mean they want to dissolve a political union and to prevent them from doing that via the ballot box, you would campaign with the racist, anti-migrant, pro-bankers, privatise-the-NHS scum that are UKIP?

    Sometimes we forget that Moseley was a Labour MP…

  10. swatantra says:

    The SNP want to rebuild Scotland and give it some pride. I wouldn’t ally myself with the likes of UKIP under no circumstances.

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