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Out of apathy – where next for Labour and the left?
Building alliances inside and outside the Labour Party and going on the offensive in committing to party democracy are key to moving beyond the current impasse, argues VINCE MILLS

IT IS a difficult time for the left in the Labour Party, in Scotland as everywhere else. There is no need, for the readers of this paper, to list the examples of back sliding mendacity from Keir Starmer and acolytes, nor the Labour leadership’s collusion in distorting or abandoning democratic practice in order to ensure absolute loyalty to our dear leader from prospective parliamentary candidates. Scotland has not been exempted from this.

We can neither ignore it, nor adopt the approach of the ultra-left which seems to have come straight out of Blackadder Goes Forth — a mad assault on enemy positions over open ground in the certainty of mass slaughter.  

Perhaps those advocating such an approach do so on the assumption that a new workers’ party is about to bring salvation to abandoned socialists, so that expelled Campaign Group members could represent “a real socialist party” for a year before losing their seats in the 2024 election. 

Public ownership and privatisation

Public-sector funding and fiscal redistribution

The constitution

The silence has ended

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