“We need a big tent plan, not a core vote strategy, to win again in Scotland.”-Kezia Dugdale, 7th July 2015
That foremost authority on Scottish Labour politics, Antonio Gramsci, once gasped, “The old world is dying away, and the new world struggles to come forth: now is the time of monsters.” Scottish Labour has now moved even further on the road of the withering old and the failing new. The monstrous period of Jim Murphy has passed, yet the fairy stories and fantasies of Murphy’s politics remain. Kezia Dugdale, the anointed successor, exemplified this with her prescription that Labour’s core vote has dwindled to the point of electoral disaster and must instead be replaced by a ‘big tent’ strategy. Scottish Labour has an image problem – it has become branded with representing ‘the most vulnerable’ and must now pivot towards those who wish to ‘better themselves.’ Continue reading