THE electoral strategy consultants can pack up their bags, commentators put down their pens.

The question that has haunted the English left for more than a decade - "how did we end up in this mess" - has been answered, finally. 

One man bears the responsibility for the abject failure of the UK Labour party to get anything right in the past 12 years...

He is Neil Findlay. 

Or at least, that's according to Comrade Findlay. 

In an interview in the Scottish Left Review, Neily credits himself with the bright idea of losing elections as a key plank of Labour's strategy. 

Auld Findo took it upon himself to say that Corbyn's inspired strategy of losing two elections to an utterly hopeless, divided and incompetent Tory party in 2017 and 2019, came from him.

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Asked if his failed run against Jim "Who? Oh, aye mind him" Murphy in 2014 paved the way for Dicky Leonard taking the reigns and running the horse straight into third place - Findo gave a resounding "yes".

He said: "I am 100% convinced that had I not stood there would have been no Jeremy Corbyn as UK leader and no Richard Leonard as Scottish leader."

The former teacher said it was his lessons in the nobility of failure that took Labour into the political wilderness for the foreseeable. 

It is not clear if Sir Keir has studied in the arts of Findlayism but the party's showing in the 2021 Hartlepool by-election suggests he may well have taken a leaf from Neily's Wee Red Book. 

Findo then went even further to suggest that Corbyn's tactic of not winning the 2017 General Election and keeping Scottish Labour in third place had come directly from him.

He said: "We campaigned on a popular socialist agenda that enthused a new generation and brought back many who left us over issues like Iraq.

"When Labour defied the pundits in 2017 the establishment and media s*** themselves at the prospect of Labour victory at the next election and with the help of opponents within his own party they unleashed the hounds of hell on Corbyn and anyone and anything associated with the project."