No, says Neil Scott.
The Corbyn project/party is a split in a London based party (new New new Labour) built around a London based interim leadership. It has become necessary because of a shift in politics that has spiralled out of the control of liberals in England. “Nationalist” capital, via Farage’s empty vessel, has radicalised people for whom the Liberal parties only ever engage with when their loyalty to some policy promise or another equates to votes. Farage and the far right have managed to mobilise these people with the idea that their “identity” is under attack.
The Corbyn project is a “British” social democratic project and we know that British social democratic projects stopped working for Scotland many years ago. The British Road to Socialism (via Corbyn-like British social democracy) has proved to be a chimera over the course of 150+ years. Scotland at present HAS a broadly social democratic government that we need to push leftwards… but I think that we aren’t at the stage of creating a singular entity to do that- yet- the SSP, Scottish Greens and SNP Socialists, along with campaign groups and unions, are in my opinion the best vehicles for this at present. This, of course, can change.
The SWP and its various fronts, Counterfire, the dilettante Jim Monaghan etc are acting opportunistically. They had already been trying to bring together a coalition of themselves that excluded many, in the weeks before the announcement from England. Monaghan just seized the day (and some press contacts) when the Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana vehicle hit headlines and pretended the group he had become involved with and Corbyn’s group were one and the same. His press smatterings ever since have been confused, to say the very least. The primordial elements of this amorphous Scottish formation have proven to be untrustworthy in the past, and with every backtrack and “misspeak” of Monaghan, they really don’t seem to have learned anything. I’m afraid their way of organising would run through any cobbled together political formation that came about like a message of self destruction through a bar of tooth rotting rock- as it did in Rise, Solidarity, and anything else these elements taped together, eg around Galloway, Sheridan and other high profile populist demigogues. But let’s be honest- they have little to offer Corbyn/Sultana. Labour for Independence have more members, and Richard Leonard has more punch than convicted liar Tommy Sheridan’s one time apologist and the SWP and their fronts.
Scotland DOES need groups to be coordinating around the idea of pushing the SNP leftwards though. The SNP are in grave danger of giving in to the right wing tendencies of their Deputy and some of their more, let’s say, “Abla”-ist elements in order to chase the same delusion of a “liberal Farageism” Starmer’s Labour have decided to go after -forums for pressurising, and steering the SNP from this ruinous path are, definitely, constructive (and SNP Socialists seem to be moving in that direction).
A party that is by design created to push London based British LABOUR leftwards and a group with structures created by people and organisations like the disreputable London based SWP and old pro-British Labour, has little to offer Scotland in the medium term (and perhaps long term).
However, if I was in England, I’d most probably be on board.
