Labour annihilated as SNP sweeps in as the ‘anti-austerity’ alternative

photo Wikimedia Commons

photo Wikimedia Commons   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Philip Stott, Socialist Party Scotland

The general election produced a “political revolution” in Scotland. The Scottish National Party (SNP) won 56 of 59 Scottish seats, polling 1.45 million votes. Now, unless huge concessions are made to the SNP through wide-ranging and extensive powers for Scotland, a new referendum on independence seems inevitable.

Scottish Labour’s vote collapsed from 42% in 2010 to below 25% and they lost 40 of their 41 MPs. This will usher in the probable end of Labour in Scotland. The trade union movement must now prepare to build a new mass party for the working class.

The SNP gained because it poses as an anti-austerity alternative, promising that SNP MPs would oppose any more Westminster cuts and would “lock the Tories out of power.” The SNP also opposed Trident’s renewal, privatisation and further attacks on welfare.

Labour still insisted that cuts would be necessary under a Labour government and said there would be “no deals, no pacts or coalitions with the SNP”. This gave the impression they would prefer the Cameron government’s return to an electoral arrangement with the SNP.

The SNP could then appeal, even to those working class people who voted No in the referendum. The surge to the SNP was spectacular.

Collapse

Labour, the former major party of the working class in Scotland, was completely eclipsed. The hatred of austerity and Labour’s criminal role in the Better Together campaign in the independence referendum obliterated Labour’s already shrunken support base.

The grim reality of another Tory government will create mass anger. Cameron and Co will be largely seen as an illegitimate government of the elite 1% in Scotland. With a huge mandate to oppose further austerity, the SNP will be under growing pressure to take a fighting stance against a cascade of planned Tory cuts.

Socialist Party Scotland and TUSC have challenged the SNP to live up to its anti-cuts claim by refusing to make Tory cuts. However, the SNP has implemented every penny of Con-Dem austerity since 2010 rather than using their dominant position in Scotland’s parliament to oppose cuts.

Instead the trade union movement must respond to the Tory government with its own huge industrial and political offensive, confronting the austerity establishment that was so decisively defeated in Scotland.

Labour’s rout will usher in unprecedented debate in Scotland’s trade unions. We’ll be calling for unions to play a key role in the forging of a real working class political alternative to all the cuts politicians – including the SNP.

Full article on www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk