I DON’T particularly enjoy the SNP versus Scottish Labour tribal divide that sadly defines popular attitudes to the Holyrood Parliament. It’s silly and more than a little embarrassing, and it disguises how much the parties have in common. For that reason, I can’t really be bothered to go over Scottish Labour’s failings at the ballot box, and I find it dull to even pounce on their leadership’s hypocrisies and misguided policies. I am consistently bored of tribal political ponderings and party failings.

However, this week I’ve discovered a fact about Scottish Labour that deserves some comment because, strangely enough, it gets to the heart of a nationalist myth about Scotland, a nationalist myth shared by SNP and Scottish Labour members in common. The fact that I’m going to share with you proves that a right-wing bloc in Scotland is trying to hold back democratic changes demanded by a vast majority of English Labour members.

First, a little background. Right now, UK Labour is undergoing an existential transformation. We don’t know where it will end, but we do know what it’s about. Their leadership election came from parliamentary Labour’s challenge to the overwhelming will of the Party’s membership. The Party’s membership wished to abandon the politics of New Labour, where every policy decision was referred to the oracle of “Middle England”. That’s why they elected Jeremy Corbyn to lead their “new politics” against what’s now the “old politics” of New Labour.

Since then, Corbyn has won every election he’s fought, barring Holyrood, where, quite frankly, Jesus Christ himself would have had a tough time electing Scottish Labour MSPs. Corbyn delivered a resounding majority of Labour voters to the pro-EU side, and his only crime there was to assert a little caution about the debased institution that only recently destroyed the Greek economy. He has opened up the party and taken seriously all criticisms of his leadership, displaying saint-like patience when he’s been faced with trumped-up charges.

His challenger, Owen Smith, is no radical. True, he’s no Blairite either, although he’s happy to let Blairites use him; ultimately, though, he’s not substantial enough to truly embrace an ideology. Essentially, Smith is a mannequin who was seized from a storeroom somewhere because Labour MPs fear for their own careers. Of course, he’s pro-Trident, pro-business and favours “austerity-lite” but these matters simply reflect his conformity to the establishment view. He lives and dies by the creed of careerism.

The problem isn’t Smith himself. I suppose he’s likeable enough, in an android salesman kind of way: I’d definitely consider buying double glazing from him. The real evil lies in this whole charade, where party members resoundingly elect a leader only to see that leader suppressed at every turn by a careerist, out-of-touch PLP.

Now, back to Scottish Labour, and the strange little fact that gives me the shivers. Outside of Scotland, 261 constituency Labour Parties have backed Corbyn, against 37 for Smith. So nearly 90 per cent of English and Welsh local Labour parties are backing Corbyn’s new politics. By contrast, just 59 per cent of Scottish Labour branches are backing Corbyn’s overwhelming democratic mandate; a great number have put their money on Smith’s PLP coup.

Of course, there’s still a small majority for Corbyn. If you’re a Scottish Labour member backing Corbyn, I’m on your side. Let’s remind ourselves what it means for a branch to back Smith. Backing Smith means that you consider party democracy completely subservient to the gossip and chatter of MPs in Westminster, the same MPs who have deliberately made Labour ungovernable, the same MPs who are out-of-touch enough to think they’re electable, and Corbyn isn’t. When 41 per cent of branches take that position, it’s alarming.

Here’s the positive flipside of this. Labour in England has embraced something vibrant and exciting. Momentum is reinvigorating their politics with the energy of protest in a manner that’s uncannily similar to Scotland in 2014. These people, contrary to utterly barmy media stereotypes, are not wizened “Trotskyists” out to wreck our saintly British democracy in the name of selling newspapers. I’ve met many members of the English Momentum campaign, and most are articulate young people, who, if anything, used to belong to or vote for the Green Party and have embraced the more radical, more working class and better-resourced message of Corbynism instead.

These people aren’t joining the Scottish Labour Party, because 2014 happened, and Labour’s alliance with the Tories in Better Together was a final blow to their remaining radical credentials. Scottish Labour’s rightward, authoritarian drift left them stranded, and by the time the 19th of September came, a record number of ordinary, left-wing working class folk had joined the SNP. They did so, initially at least, in protest at the sheer ugliness of Labour’s “project fear”. That protest has hardened into a permanent alliance that treats Labour and Tory as two parts of the same problem.

Within the pro-independence forces in Scotland, we’ve got to realise that Corbyn’s enemies are our enemies. When Corbyn wins the Labour leadership election, the British establishment – led by the supine Guardian columnists, I’m afraid to say – will launch a “project fear” on an unimaginable scale to stop him winning a future election. Right now, with no second referendum looking likely anytime soon, I reckon they fear Corbyn more than the SNP. Much more.

My message to pro-independence Scotland is simple. The British establishment want us to join their game. They want us to contrast the “extremism” of Brexit on the right and Corbyn on the left with the moderation of our own centre-ground politics. It’s easy, maybe even profitable, to play along with that. But it’s politically wrong and potentially disastrous: we’ll become accomplices of the British establishment, and we’ll deny England its own democratic awakening.

My message to Corbyn’s supporters is also simple. You must talk about democracy in Britain. The Westminster system is largely to blame for the current crisis in the Labour Party; surely that’s obvious by now. English politics is devoid of democracy, and that’s why UKIP-style agendas are thriving.

Corbyn’s Momentum and the 2014 independence movement are connected, and in some ways, we’re natural allies. We’ve both shown the space for an alternative, a new politics. We aren’t clinging to the failed cliches of the past, like your Hillary Clintons and Owen Smiths and the EU Remain campaign. We’re rediscovering the possibilities of democracy from the bottom up.

Right now, English politics is leading and we’re following. I’ve got no problem with that. It’s always been my view that a break up of Britain is best for everyone, for radicals in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

But let’s remember that Scotland isn’t always, by default, the cutting edge of radicalism. Contrary to myths shared across the Scottish establishment – the notion that there’s something simply egalitarian in our nationhood – sometimes our politics will be the more conservative pole in Britain. Actually, that makes me happy, because we’ve got lessons to learn. Let’s embrace radical democracy and redistribution of wealth as our common aims.