NEGATIVITY rules. We have it coming at us from every angle.

On these islands, the Tory Government at Westminster tells us, repeatedly, about all the things that can’t be done.We can’t afford to support people in need. We can’t afford public services. We can’t plan for the future until we’ve settled the debt. Although very many of us have noticed that we can apparently ignore the debt and sell off shares bought with our money at a knock down price, all the while showing the bankers yet again all the things they can get away with.

In Europe, more lectures and wringing of hands about what can’t be done. We can’t help those so desperate for life they risk it in overcrowded boats crossing the Mediterranean sea. And if our callousness there doesn’t kill them and they make it to Calais, then we’ll keep wringing our hands and worrying about our holidays while they risk life and limb to the Channel tunnel, or clamber under a lorry as it boards the ferry.

For those souls engaged in Labour’s UK leadership, more siren voices telling them what can’t be done. Jeremy Corbyn can’t possibly be the next Labour leader, he’ll never be prime minister, and you can’t possibly support him.

Politicians, commentators, newspaper editorials, and broadcast news – the list of naysayers is endless and unremitting.

And yet, while families struggling to pay the bills and put food on the table add to their worries with back-to-school clothes and shoes for their children, individuals and communities step forward. Not only to fill the food bank shelves, but now to bring in the trousers, skirts, blouses, shirts shoes and jackets that are desperately needed. And while they’re at it, the rucksacks, pencils, pens, paper that will be needed too. Determined that every child will keep their self-respect and their optimism for that return to school.

Jeremy Corbyn, frankly one of the least likely triggers for momentum does precisely that. Not by any PR or media savvy coup, simply by dint of what he says and the sharp contrast between that and the naysayers dithering first one way then another, whilst posing as serious players in a leadership race.

And amongst our European neighbours, small communities in Greek islands simply knuckle down to feed and clothe and welcome the desperate souls who make it to their shores.

In the face of all the negativity that comes at us from so many sides, two things above all are striking. The power of the positive. And the astonishing inability of most politicians whether here or in Europe, to see it and understand.

In the UK Labour leadership race, a recent YouGov survey of Labour members put Jeremy Corbyn at 53 per cent support overall and 61 per cent among women members. It seems that Labour members are responding not only to his opposition to austerity and the rise in poverty that it demands, but also to what many see as his straightforward, quiet style. What is interesting is who these same supporters put as their second choice – Yvette Cooper for women, Andy Burnham for men. And yet both of these are pretty firm in their support for an economic strategy that in large measure embraces austerity and the god of “paying down the debt”. Could it be that it is much less about policy and much more about what Corbyn seems to represent in values, in focusing on what can be done and what could be possible?

In those communities across Scotland, the “back-to-school” movement gathering clothes and pencils and shoes so that no child goes through the school gates in the next week feeling or looking different from the others, the mantra is what can be done, what is possible.

Here in Scotland, we began to wake up to what is possible in 2007 and our eyes widen every year. The SNP wins electoral triumph after triumph through persistent positive campaigning. Not pie in the sky, but the straightforward arguments that refuse to accept that “nothing can be done” and a better future isn’t possible.

In the referendum, the politics of negativity reached a new height, but still hundreds of thousands refused to accept what “couldn’t be done”, what “wasn’t sensible”.

But more than any party, ordinary folks living along the road from any one of us, shopping in the same supermarket or waiting beside us at the bus stop, are increasingly questioning that what we have is all we should expect. The years of knowing your place in politics are increasingly being shunned.

Negativity both hides fear and preys on it too. The fear of those in power that they may lose their grip on that slippery ledge. The fear we may have of change, of stepping forward, of challenging accepted thinking. The shiver of fear we can all feel when we realise we can make our own and other’s lives better if we dare to take the first step. Those steps are being taken, to feed and clothe children, to help families struggling, to reach out and welcome those so desperate for life that they are willing to risk it. We need to keep taking those steps and proving that it is positivity, and only that, which works. Hope, realised in action, can make negativity shrivel and fade away.