YOU say “tomayto”, I say “tomato”. You say “possibly an indyref 2 for the Scots”, I say “definitely no indyref 2 for Scots”. You say “people’s vote”, I say ... you get the picture.

The Labour Party can’t seem to make up its mind. On one hand we have the King of Socialism, Corbyn, hinting at being “open” to another independence referendum for Scotland and on the other, his Scottish leader goes rogue and says absolutely no way should the Scots be allowed their democratic choice to hold another referendum on independence.

Contradictory fudge. Political lunacy. Democracy undermined. Or is it just that chaos and confusion reigns in the Corbyn kingdom?

READ MORE: Labour leader Leonard is clearly suffering from Murphymatosis

Are Corbyn and Leonard not aware that we already have a mandate for a second independence referendum? It’s not up to Corbyn to dangle a carrot at the Scottish electorate, and it’s certainly not up to Richard Leonard to deny us our democratic right. Corbyn being coy about his support for Scottish self-determination has been exposed by Leonard’s comments – Labour doesn’t care about the sovereign will of the Scottish people, it only cares about the Union and is ready to sacrifice democracy to preserve it.

Mind you, Leonard does not have a good track record when it comes to Scottish matters. His continuing lack of understanding devolved issues makes watching his performances in Holyrood an uncomfortable experience. It’s hardly surprising that he doesn’t support a second referendum when he’s not even sure what powers are devolved to Scotland courtesy of our 20-year-old parliament.

Nor does he have much of a grasp of Scottish political history. Labour’s conversion to a parliament, rather than a mere assembly, was based on the Claim of Right in the 1990s. That is when Donald Dewar and a generation of Scots Labour leaders, who unlike Leonard were household names, backed the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine their future form of government.

Leonard, in contrast, is the leader of a rump of a Scottish political party saying it doesn’t matter what Scotland votes for in the parliament where he works, and that he doesn’t believe in the will of the people he represents, because they will just be ignored if and when he gets into power. Another nail in the coffin for Scottish Labour, hammered in by their own leader and another point scored for the Tories.

None of this should be any surprise to voters in Scotland. We already know that Labour will say and do anything to try to stop independence and protect the Union at any cost. Labour were at the heart of the Vow, the last-minute “better together” panic before the first referendum back in 2014. As we now know, the Vow was worth less than the newspaper it was published in, exposed by the ensuing chaos of Brexit and the lack of leadership at the very top of the Labour party to protect Scotland at any level.

It’s Labour’s animosity towards the SNP that gets in the way of clear thinking. They’ve never forgiven my party for seizing the leadership position back in 2007 and consolidating it ever since. They fail to understand that their eclipse was not written in the astronomical charts but brought about by their own inability to understand the Scottish electorate and their vision for the future of our nation.

In the campaign for the snap General Election in 2017, I saw just what Labour were capable of in order to oppose the SNP and a future indyref2. Jumping into bed with the Tories was only a small part of it, highlighted by the then leader Kezia Dugdale’s assertion that if people in certain areas in Scotland weren’t going to vote for her party then they’d be better off voting Tory to keep the SNP out. Labour only managed to elect seven MPs, while 12 new Tory MPs arrived in Westminster with an anti-European, right-wing agenda that would have made George Younger, never mind Keir Hardie, spin in his grave. All thanks to Kezia’s great advice.

Leonard has hardly made his mark since inheriting Dugdale’s poison chalice. Until his speech at conference last weekend, he could have happily sauntered down Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street and not been recognised by many shoppers passing by. This in a city in which a Labour machine bossed for decades. Now he has put his face on the map by selling out his country. And, thanks to the appalling and mind-boggling throwaway sectarianism from his colleague, Andy Kerr, Leonard will go down in political history as overseeing one of the worst Scottish Labour appearances at conference – ever. All this capped by the blood-curling cry to “kill off” the Scottish nationalists.

Doesn’t Neil Kinnock falling over on the beach at Brighton and denting his credibility as leader all seem so innocent now?

What a mess. And it gets worse. At conference, Labour announced that they support a people’s vote but only on a deal-or-no-deal basis. John McDonnell was then duly wheeled out to re-emphasise this stance. It must have been a hard Monday night of hand-wringing and reanalysis because, come Tuesday, shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer provoked a standing ovation by assuring delegates that “nobody is ruling out Remain as an option” on the second referendum ballot papers. Whether the Brexiteers of Labour, ie Corbyn, McDonnell and McCluskey, are on board with this remains to be seen. One thing is sure, the Labour Party’s stance is evolving fast. Their survival as a species depends on it.

In a microcosm, Labour’s divisions symbolise the UK on Brexit – deeply split between Remain and Leave with no-one happy. Meanwhile, in Scotland, in their desire to “kill off the nationalists and regain that great country”, as their chairman Ian Lavery said, they have wounded themselves in a gross act of self-harm.

Those with deeper knowledge of Scottish politics than Richard Leonard will know that this echoed a cry from George Robertson in the 1990s who thought that devolution would “kill the SNP stone dead”. As far as much of Scotland is concerned, Labour have made themselves irrelevant and we already know we’re a great country without any help from UK Labour.

With the clock ticking on Brexit and indyref2, this could be Labour’s future epitaph in an isolated Britain and an independent Scotland – a party which failed the Scots, failed the wider UK and failed Europe. Quite a farewell, not fond but final.