WHEN Jeremy Corbyn repeated his promise to “take back Scotland for Labour” this week, you could almost hear the bristling in the heather.

We Scots don’t like being taken for granted – we’re known for our stubborn streak, but more importantly, and cultural cliches aside, we respect democracy and our right to choose who we vote for. We exercised that right when we voted in 2016 for the SNP government to continue at Holyrood, and when we chose the SNP again at the recent snap General Election. On both occasions, greatly reduced support for Scottish Labour sunk the party to third place in Scotland. Unfortunately, the democratic deficit at work in the UK means our voting wishes are not respected in Westminster, particularly regarding Brexit. The 62 per cent of us who voted to stay in the European Union are not taking kindly to being ignored.

However, the little issue of Brexit and respecting the wishes of the Scottish people doesn’t seem to worry Labour too much if its initial absence on their party conference agenda is anything to go by. By omitting the greatest crisis to hit British politics in many a year they are missing the point. In England, left-wing voters have nowhere left to go but Labour, regardless of their misgivings on leaving the EU. This is not the case in Scotland, where the SNP have continually fought to retain our voice in Europe and are successfully implementing socially just policies. How can Jeremy Corbyn possibly hope to woo back voters in Scotland when his personal beliefs and the position of his party on Brexit is diametrically opposed to our democratic wishes?

The truth is, Labour needs Scottish support more than we need them. North of the Border the party has lost its mojo, facing its ninth leadership contest since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. Harking back to the good old days when Scottish people voted Labour unquestioningly will do the party no good – Brexit is a stark illustration of the damage nostalgia can bring.

To suggest that Scotland is theirs for the taking is to ignore the enormous changes in the UK’s political landscape over the last few years. The Scots have not forgotten how Labour and their Better Together pals lied to them during and after the independence referendum. At the time, Labour promised Scotland maximum devolution, in an attempt to regain ground as voter confidence slipped through their fingers like grains of sand. Leader Jim Murphy pledged a raft of new powers in the hope of deterring Yes voters, and who can forget Gordon Brown’s infamous “Vow”. The truth came out when the Smith Commission on further devolved powers was published later that year, showing that Labour had used all their influence to oppose every single additional tax power being devolved to Scotland. The Vow turned out to be worth little more than the paper it was written on.

This of course wasn’t the only thing they lied about. Scotland was told to vote No by Labour and their Tory chums in order to stay in the EU, and look how that turned out. Corbyn hasn’t registered just how much the referendum galvanised the people of Scotland – on both sides.A new political awakening occurred that cannot be reversed.

Yet still they clutch at straws. When the Scotland Bill amendments were debated in Parliament, Labour once again voted with the Tories to prevent Scotland gaining full fiscal autonomy. This week as they try to shift the blame to the SNP for their own disastrous Public Finance Initiatives, we are reminded that the SNP stopped this inefficient scheme as soon as they came into power 10 years ago. The same can be said of the gender pay gap at Glasgow City Council, something the Labour council put the brakes on fixing for the whole time they were in charge. Labour is fighting a losing battle. Voters won’t have the wool pulled over their eyes any more.

On Brexit, one thing is for sure – it will be a disaster for Scotland. Research has predicted at least 80,000 job losses over 10 years and a drop in wages of £2,000 per head. The National Farmers Union Scotland has warned our farmers could lose more than £250 million a year as a result of leaving the EU.

The fact remains – Labour is totally out of step with Scottish voters. We don’t want Brexit, we don’t want to leave the single market, we value freedom of movement, and we don’t want nuclear weapons on our soil. We’ve got rid of tuition fees, dumped the pay cap for public-sector workers, we’ve fully mitigated the atrocious bedroom tax, and we’ve protected our disabled people. We’ve done all this despite the constant chipping away of our finances by the Tories and support for austerity by Labour in Westminster. And this is just the tip of the iceberg in our government’s plans to create a prosperous, fairer, more inclusive society. It’s the stuff Labour can only dream of, or at least copy and paste into their manifesto.

Corbyn needs to change his tune and realise Scotland’s not for the taking any time soon.