THERE is every reason, when faced with the crushing election defeat of Labour in the UK and the even worse performance in Scotland, for the left to stop and take stock. 

However, it is not a reason for panic, or making concessions to our political right — whether nationalist or centrist. 

In this regard, it is worth recalling that, as predicted, the gang of attack dogs of the “private” press and news channels as well as the “public” BBC did more than their savage best to destroy Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. 

I do not need to offer arguments to support this — voices more authoritative than mine already have. 

On anti-semitism, for example, the book Bad News For Labour — Antisemitism, The Party and Public Belief by well-known media academics, demolishes the myth of a party “riddled” with anti-semitism and reveals that, nevertheless, many people accepted it to be true. 

And analysis by Loughborough University exposes the depth of anti-Labour, pro-Tory bias across the media throughout the campaign but more especially how it reached siren levels as the campaign drew to a close.  

We need to take account of this in considering the drop in Labour’s support and this includes the increased support for the SNP, when trying to assess what contributed to Labour’s defeat because the actual policies that Labour espoused — Brexit aside — were popular, according to polling undertaken during the campaign.  

The position on Brexit was another matter: in 52 of the 60 seats lost in the general election the electorate had voted to leave the EU in 2016. 

Furthermore, Labour’s attempt to present its leader as somehow “above” taking a decision on this key issue simply made Labour seem confused, divided and weak.  

In Scotland, as Nicola Sturgeon never tires of telling us, 62 per cent of those voting supported the UK remaining in the EU. 

Even here, Labour’s pro-EU stance did little good; it lost six seats and all of them had voted Remain.

Instead UK Labour’s position, heavily supported by the Scottish leadership of the party, meant Scottish Labour could not reach out to the 38 per cent who had voted to leave. 

Many of them were SNP supporters and most of them working class and in 2017 election they had spurned the SNP because of its pro-EU stance.

More fundamental in understanding the SNP’s dominance is its continued transformation into New Labour in disguise. 

The Scottish middle classes can be comforted by the knowledge that the SNP will ensure money will continue to be siphoned off from local government funds into programmes designed to remake Scotland in their image and be certain that in the unlikely event of another referendum being called and in the even more unlikely event of that referendum delivering Scottish independence, it will be Scotland’s working class that will pay the very considerable price: it is all clearly set out in the SNP’s Growth Commission.

Before and during the election, the Scottish Labour Party did nowhere near enough to expose this. It failed to mount a serious attack on the SNP’s local government robbery and it failed to produce a detailed, popular, left, federal alternative to the SNP’s bourgeois nationalism.

So, yes, there are problems, but they are hardly unsurmountable. You would not believe this if you were to consider the two significant responses that emerged shortly after the election result from within the Scottish Labour Party.

The first was to concede, at least implicitly, that Scottish independence is inevitable, so Scottish Labour should accommodate this, and the second that we should return to the failed “triangulation” of Blairism, but wrapped in a Union Jack. 

The first position was enshrined in a letter signed by several dozen Scottish Labour Party members. While it presents itself as a demand for more democracy it is clearly an acceptance of the inevitability of independence.

“We refuse to abandon the people of Wales, Northern Ireland and England to Tory rule, even if Scotland chooses to pursue its own road to socialism,” for which read “independent road to socialism” — this is at the very least wishful thinking given the SNP’s utter dominance of the nationalist movement. 

Just to underline the point Chris McEleny, SNP group leader on Inverclyde Council and generally thought to be on the radical wing of the SNP, tweeted recently: “…the campaign for Scottish independence is not a campaign for socialism, it’s a campaign for self-determination for the nation in perpetuity.”

The problem for the signatories and for the SNP is that the Scottish people already have self-determination and they exercised it in 2014, when they voted to remain in the United Kingdom. 

You may argue, as the signatories and the SNP do, that they want to do it again soon, even if the majority of Scots don’t, and you may even argue that you want the current practice in our unwritten constitution changed so that the decision about choosing to exercise that right should be made in Scotland and not Westminster, which I consider a reasonable demand. 

Ignored by the signatories, however, is the small matter of how you determine whether the Scottish people want another referendum. 

Current polling evidence says that the Scottish people do not want one any time soon. According to YouGov there are large majorities hostile to a second referendum in the next two years and only 44 per cent in favour of holding one within the next five years. 

And if we are, say, to give the Scottish Parliament the right to decide whether we have a referendum, what criteria should be in place to trigger that decision? Polling evidence? A simple majority in the Scottish Parliament? A super majority in the Scottish Parliament? 

Failure to get this right could lead to a “neverendum” driven by the obvious propensity of the SNP to cry “referendum” to distract attention from SNP ministerial incompetence, mismanagement and more recently personal scandals.  

More importantly, it is fundamental as to how the Scottish people can democratically exercise their right to choose their constitutional future. 

Worse, but more familiar, has been the zombie ideas of the Scottish Labour right, insisting that the corpse of the pan-class alliance of the Better Together campaign should be brought back to life, and Corbyn’s agenda dumped. 

This is now feeding into the current UK Labour Party leadership and deputy leadership campaigns in the UK and Scotland. 

The UK party cheerleader for the zombies is Ian Murray, MP for Edinburgh South, who is standing for the deputy leadership. 

There is no recognition from him that Labour’s 2019 policies were popular. Although, strangely, he recognises that Better Together unionism undermined support for class politics and the Scottish Labour Party, but he is proud of it.  

He told the Times: “The Labour Party in 2014 destroyed itself by campaigning for Scotland to stay in the UK because it was the right thing to do and I’m sure the Scottish Labour Party would do the same again.” 

His perspective is mirrored by Jackie Baillie, who is standing for deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party. Like Murray, Baillie believes a simple espousal of unionism and the EU would have won us the election in Scotland.

But hope is at hand. At UK level Rebecca Long Bailey standing for the leadership and Richard Burgon for the deputy leadership have pledged to support and develop the radical programme that emerged from the Corbyn leadership. 

Long Bailey has also recently emphasised the importance of a revived trade unionism in sustaining a left programme. Nor are they ignoring the importance of a Scottish Parliament that can deliver radical change for the Scottish people.

Burgon has laid out how a left-wing Labour Party should make progress — a new clause four, a national demonstration against the Trump/Netanyahu carve-up of Palestine and a peace pledge to stop imperialist wars. 

Both Long Bailey and Burgon are arguing for open selection to ensure that MPs are accountable to their local parties.

And in Scotland Matt Kerr has emerged to challenge Baillie from a solid left perspective. His arguments chime with those of the UK left challengers. As he put it in Tribune: “We need to be a party that challenges the Establishment not one that, through a sense of complacency and entitlement, is seen to be a part of the Establishment.”

These perspectives require a grassroots renewal of trade unionism and community-based activism, especially against austerity. There is therefore no need to panic but there is a desperate need to recognise that this is a pivotal moment in the Labour Party’s history in Scotland and in the UK and that we must do everything possible to support those who want to develop the work of the Corbyn project, not bury it, because believe me, that is exactly what the right will do if we do not stop them.