Jack the puppet's fate tied to rulers

[Excellent! - JOE]

JIM SILLARS

IF you flee wi' the craws, you get shot wi' the craws. That age-old Scottish saying is now haunting Labour MSPs at Holyrood. Although they claim to be from the Scottish Labour Party, they are in reality British Labour MSPs, and as public anger and contempt grows for British Labour, down they are going to go, and they know it.

Their problem is that no matter how many kilts Jack McConnell models, or how many Saltires he waves, or how many times he says he doesn't support England in the World Cup, people in Scotland know that Labour MSPs are puppets jerked around on British Labour strings pulled in London.

Not once have those Labour MSPs refused to toe the line laid down by Tony Blair. The vote in the Scottish Parliament about going to war with Iraq was the supreme example. We saw, against the war, the greatest demonstration ever with masses of Scots saying "Not in my name."

Yet these Blairites at Holyrood, jumping to Downing Street's instructions, voted for what they knew was wrong.

There was a chilling message for all politicos like them from the mouth of the Independent in Blaenau Gwent, Nye Bevan's old seat. "You have taken us for granted for too long," was his winner's message to Labour, the party he was once a member of.

Exactly the same message heard from the voters of Dunfermline earlier this year when Labour was trounced in what it regarded, arrogantly, as a safe seat where the votes were weighed not counted.

Precisely the same message heard from the Monklands hospital campaigners last week when they learned that having the Home Secretary John Reid as their MP, and three Labour MSPs in the constituencies it served, was worth nothing.

Labour in Scotland has become the Establishment. As the Tory vote has withered, the Lib Dems seeming to be no more than a Borders and North-East regional nuisance, and with people so easily frightened of independence and the SNP, Labour has dined extravagantly at the public
trough, and taken its pre-eminent position for granted.

In Labour eyes it has become the duty for people to vote Labour, not for Labour to serve the people. The party that was nurtured in the womb of principle, born to fight for the underprivileged, whose pioneers made enormous sacrifices for a noble socialist cause, has become a featherbed of cronyism.

But the fatal mistake of Labour has been to assume that they can take the people for granted all of the time.

Times have changed. As the old industrial Scotland died away, to be replaced by the new economic structures of the service and technology industries, and as former council tenants became owner occupiers (and therefore not subject to the whims of local councillors over where they stayed), the old tribal Labour loyalty began to wane.

Today, few young or middle-aged people automatically vote as their mums and dads did.

Political parties are now on trial by an electorate grown tired of spin, falsehood and promises never delivered.

It is no longer the case that Labour could put a red jacket on a monkey and get it easily elected.

The Scots now see Labour clearer than they ever did before, and they don't like what they see. Especially as MSPs' ties with Blair cannot be hidden, and are going to prove fatal in next year's elections.