AS ALMOST every speech made by a Labour MSP at Holyrood yesterday turned into an anti-Nationalist harangue it was as though this once-proud party was pronouncing its own death rites.

It was day one of the parliamentary debate on Nicola Sturgeon’s intention to seek a second independence referendum and it marked a new and wretched nadir for a party whose writ, less than a decade ago, ran to the furthest corner of the realm.

As one Labour member after another rose to denounce the very notion of another exercise in democracy it became clear, and not for the first time, that there is something fundamentally dishonest about the position of Scottish Labour over the country’s constitutional future.

In 2014, by the party’s own estimates, more than a third of its traditional supporters voted for independence. This time around the Labour for Independence group have begun to organise early and it’s expected that another considerable quantity of what remains of the party’s support will opt for self-determination once more.

Curiously though, this significant grouping is utterly unrepresented by the party at Holyrood. Indeed not a single one of Labour’s 37 MSPs in 2014 voted Yes. This afternoon each of its 24 members will dutifully join hands with the Conservatives again not just to oppose an independent Scotland but to oppose the opportunity even to have a second ballot. Either the party at Holyrood is utterly unrepresentative of its own grass-roots communities or several MSPs who privately favour independence have been cowed into opposing it.

In the past 12 months, Kezia Dugdale and Jeremy Corbyn have signalled they have no issue with the prospect of another referendum on Scottish independence. Yet there they all were yesterday, the Scottish Labour 24, all adopting what has become the party’s default position: holding hands with the Conservative Party. It’s almost as if, having accepted that there is no hope of recovery for the patient, they want the end to come quickly and to explore what lies beyond.

This time around the SNP made it easy for Labour. Stitched into their Holyrood manifesto less than a year ago was a commitment to seek a second referendum if a significant change in the UK’s political circumstances had occurred. More than one million Scottish voters backed this offer and fully understood its implications. Yet, ten months later, one Labour MSP after another would have us believe that the SNP doesn’t have a mandate even to seek a second referendum. Who are they trying to kid: themselves by the looks of it; few others are being fooled. This is a party which has become detached from its moorings.

Yesterday we learned that last-gasp desperation isn’t confined to the conduct of the party at Holyrood. Brian Wilson, a former minister in Tony Blair’s government and one of the smartest political operators the party has produced in recent years, also appears to have been possessed by something nasty.

Even if you take into account Wilson’s febrile animus towards Scottish independence, yesterday’s revelation in our sister paper, The Herald betrayed a monumental lack of judgement. According to Wilson the SNP were engaged in a “deliberate attempt to sectarianise Scottish politics”.

He said that “by putting that tag on, and in the full knowledge of that connotation in an Irish context, they know exactly what they’re doing. It’s a very dangerous road they’re going down”. This is a very dangerous road, but it’s Brian Wilson who has chosen to take it. Perhaps Wilson is unaware of the Scotland in Union organisation who have already been active on the streets of Scotland and who organised a protest at the SNP’s Spring Conference in Aberdeen at the weekend. This group is backed by some of the Union’s highest profile supporters. No one is suggesting that they are introducing “sectarianism” into the debate. They are in fact holding a position which Nicola Sturgeon described as “honourable” at Holyrood yesterday.

Perhaps Mr Wilson was obliquely referencing the fact that among Scotland’s faith communities support for independence was greatest among Catholics. There are many and varied reasons why this was so and Wilson’s injudicious comments were insulting to them. They were also indicative of a sense of desperation that has enveloped the Labour Party in Scotland.

For decades the Labour Party enjoyed almost universal support among working class Catholics in the party’s former heartlands. Catholics embraced Labour because the party promised a route out of the Irish ghettoes of Glasgow’s east end and large parts of Lanarkshire and Dundee. There is no single reason why many Catholics voted Yes in 2014 but it’s not unreasonable to suggest it was for the same reasons why Glasgow, North Lanarkshire and Dundee all voted Yes.

They had simply become disillusioned with a party that had previously acted as though it had an automatic entitlement to their vote.

There is a disproportionately high number of Catholics living in Scotland’s most disadvantaged communities, places which had become prey to the Westminster Conservatives’ one-sided austerity programme and where benefits sanctions had targeted the weakest and most vulnerable in society.

Brian Wilson’s baseless and lazy claims are indicative of a party that has lost touch with reality and which is being kept alive artificially. Scottish Nationalism and the struggle for self-determination are not the enemies of the Labour Party in Scotland. Labour’s enemies are to be found within a hard-Right Westminster government who are set to rule in the UK for another 20 years or so.

During that time the gap between rich and poor will grow wider and free rein will be given to international money launderers and tax-evading corporations.

The social and cultural cleansing of working class communities from their traditional strongholds will continue at pace as the Conservatives seek to devour more real estate for overseas “investors”. Yet when Labour finally produced a leader who recognises this they opted instead to do the Conservatives’ work for them and destroy him. And when their core supporters in Scotland opted for independence to free themselves from the fate of the working class in England the party has chosen to turn on them too.

An independent Scotland could offer a secure refuge for what remains of the Labour Party in this country. Sadly though, even the party’s so-called intellectuals are so consumed with enmity towards Scottish nationalism that they have become blind and have begun wildly to strike out at their own.