Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland today, Len McCluskey, the former general secretary of the Unite union, had a few choice words for Anas Sarwar and the direction in which he's taking the Labour party in Scotland.
In McCluskey's opinion, Sarwar is leading the Labour party even further into irrelevance and decay, saying that the party has lost the trust of ordinary people in Scotland and it's not going to win it back by aping the Conservatives' anti-democratic intransigence on the subject of another independence referendum.
He added that it's not who is leader that is the problem – a fact which ought to be clear by now to even the most block-headed Labour MSP given the failure of a succession of leaders since 2014 to reverse the party's declining fortunes. The real problem is that since 2014, as far as the constitutional question which defines the Scottish political landscape is concerned, Labour and the Conservatives have been the twin cheeks of the proverbial bahoochie.
McCluskey said that, in his view, Labour ought to accept that there needs to be another referendum, otherwise Labour will never regain the trust of the electorate.
Labour stood in the May Holyrood election on a platform of opposition to another independence referendum. The voters of Scotland listened to Labour's arguments – and deprived the party of two of its seats. Labour lost that vote and lost the argument, the people of Scotland instead elected a Parliament with the largest pro-independence majority in history – a majority elected with a clear and unequivocal mandate for another independence referendum within the five-year term of this Parliament. Democracy demands that Labour, if it really is the People's party, accepts the verdict of the voters.
As McCluskey pointed out, this does not mean that Labour needs to become a pro-independence party. During the independence referendum campaign, Labour can continue to argue against independence and for its vision of a reformed and renewed UK in which devolution is strengthened and protected from Conservative meddling.
However, all we currently hear is Anas Sarwar, Jackie Baillie and the other uber-unionists of the Labour party at Holyrood telling us why there must not be another referendum. We know they don't want another referendum, they put their arguments against another referendum before the people in May, and the people decisively rejected them.
How can we believe Labour's promises to strengthen the powers of Holyrood when they still keep rehashing the arguments of May's election campaign and refuse to acknowledge that the electorate has already made up its mind? The voters have listened to Anas Sarwar's anti-referendum case and decided: "Nope, we still want another referendum." However, Labour is putting its fingers in its ears and singing Rule Britannia.
Len McCluskey is quite correct, the Labour party can never outdo the Conservatives when it comes to British nationalism, and unless they break from their current knee-jerk opposition to accepting the verdict of the people of Scotland at the ballot box, they will be condemned to remain irrelevant and marginal.
This piece is an extract from today's REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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