The SNP collapse across the Borders and Northeast is the reason why the Tories were able to gain enough seats to limp past a majority with DUP help
Labour gains in the central Belt after being totally wiped out here just two weeks ago
The SNP is now under threat from both the right and left, what does this mean for independence? What next?
All this and more itt
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I wish I lived in Scotland. It looks like a rocky, bleak, rainy pile. I'd love it.
our capital city is like london without pakis :^)
Why is Scotland so classcucked?
It more than makes up for it in English. My favourite historical fact will always be that Edinburgh was owned by the Kingdom of Northumbria for a while.
and I was born there
Scottish politics is mostly just annoying thanks to the quirks of power without power, responsibility without power, and so on. One can almost see why unionist politicians are so desperate to run down to Westminster as soon as possible. I'd probably flee Holyrood as well.
Hundreds of years of the machinations of capitalism and being part of a global capitalist economy. I mean, it's mildly less classcucked than the UK as a whole. (Assuming you measure the present, instead of rates of change, since the map shows it "getting more classcucked" while starting from a less classcucked position than the UK as a whole.)
It's easily the most radical part of the british isles
its where 17th century liberalism was born
also where socialism took off first, UKwide (red clydeside, ILP)
Even today the attitudes of Scots vs Anglos on issues like war, austerity, nukes etc. are very markedly different
Scotland's indigenous bourgeoisie has largely been extinct for over a century, so the independence movement is largely composed of radical or socdem elements.
So a thought I had: Did the SNP have the finances to fight this campaign effectively?
Perhaps their quietness was due to some malinvestment on their part (such as pushing money towards an independence campaign and not expecting an election.) as opposed to just trying to fly beneath the radar.
In theory they should have had the cash from membership fees alone, but it's an interesting thought. Contrast the Tories, who had large infusions of cash and spent it lavishly. (See reports of people getting 10+ Tory leaflets.)
it astounds me how a city as bougie as Edinburgh has been solidly Labour (now SNP) voting for so long. AFAIK edinburgh central (holyrood) is the only area with a significant tory presence.
Was pretty gutted to see that traitor Iain Murray increase his majority by over 15,000 votes though, and then not even acknowledge the corbyn effect on TV
Something's definitely fucky with the finances this election. According to STV they've used indyref2 funds for their GE effort. Tories have been bombarding Scotland with leaflets (shitty graphs et al), and even funds aside the SNP campaign has been spectacularly uninspired and just awful. Last minute corbyn surge especially fucked them. Sturgeon probably saw it coming, hence her attempt to kamikaze dugdale with the "brexit phonecall" scandal.
If this DUP government collapses and brings about another election, I could legit see the SNP completely eviscerated as a party at westminster, because they've lost all their safe seats and are extremely vulnerable to tactical votes now.
I think the explanation lies in Edinburgh being full of middle-class-liberal-schoolteacher sorts, both in terms of social position and in terms of political outlook. Particularly since the Tories seemed to do okay locally until the 80s. (Can't find a quick-and-easy Westminster results chart. "Progressives" are basically Tories who hate municipal socialism. en.wikipedia.org
I think if there's time for additional preparation they could actually take some seats back at the next election - especially if left-wing Labour voters were to go SNP in key seats to bolster Corbyn's chances, but that might just be wishful thinking to get back Salmond. IIRC some of the Con/Lab gains are pretty marginal, so everything's a bit screwy.
I think the most notable thing is the decline in turnout. That probably really fucked the SNP this time, but turnout will almost certainly drop again amongst traditional voters if we have a second election - the question is, does that do in the Conservatives and Scottish Labour (as we see a decline in turnout from the middle-class who voted before the referendum), or fuck the SNP even more?
Labour: 30
SNP: 30
Tories: 40
Tories get to represent that district, FPTP proven to be broken.
How does it compare to Northern Ireland? The majority Irish parts there still seem to be at least solidly SocDem.
Differential turnout completely fucked the SNP over. They spent too long fighting the Tories to notice the sly Labour comeback, by which time it was too late. Had the SNP done the right thing and discarded unionist votes and tried to shore up nationalist support, they'd have 45+ seats, and we wouldn't be questioning the prospect of independence as it stands.
At this point, I honestly think the only way forward for independence is to build a new cross-class consensus from the grassroots like in catalonia. Let the SNP entrench itself in the east coast and rural areas as a centrist bougie nationalist party, while a leftwing republican party for independence takes the west coast/central belt.
Labour and the SNP are completely different parties with different goals though, I'm sick of leftypol treating the two as exchangable.
Labour under Corbyn straddles the line between demsoc and succdem
SNP basically straddle the succdem-neolib line while focusing mostly on Scottish autonomy with the view to independence. However, they are much more radical than Labour when it comes to foreign policy like anti-imperialism, opposing intervention wars nuclear weapons etc.
What's the likelyhood of Scottland becoming it's own left leaning country?
Until theresa may called her idiotic snap election a month ago? it was looking damn good. Now I'm not sure.
Right now things are looking bretty good for the British left thanks to Corbyn, but the main left-of-centre independence party here (the SNP) lost a lot of seats. Brexit is the main concern in the rest of the UK.
really shows the whole "we aren't spooked by nationalism, we will be more left wing independent from the UK" to be a giant meme
only because they've been posing as radicals for so long that actually shifting leftwards won't work. What I'm actually saying is that the SNP needs to be supplanted from the left by a new and authentic radical political force, or else allowing an entire movement to fall hostage to the ups and downs of one mediocre party is a recipe for disaster.
Shilling for british unionism because of a minor blip in its politics (are jezza) is almost as classcucked as shilling for the EU just because you don't like farage or UKIP. Scottish independence needs to be supported by the entire left if only because of its potential to destroy one of the last imperial states in Britain. Corbyn will eventually lose an election and the Tories will reverse the good he does. Scottish independence would truly wipe the slate clean though.
The interesting thing is that the Labour comeback has been distributed oddly. In some seats their vote share actually fell, the SNP just fell more. I think they were something like 2500 votes away from 40 seats.
I'd have to recheck but I'm not sure if that would be the most efficient contortion. They seem to have held on pretty well in Glasgow, etc, with more losses coming from the North East and Borders.
While obviously from a leftist perspective defining the SNP as "centre" and having a leftier-alternative is preferable to making the SNP your "radical" wing, it would seem to involve less contortion to create a new centre-right nationalist party. (Of course this entails the risk of spiralling into a celtic-tiger memefest.)
The problem is that in Scotland even this isn't entirely certain, with Scottish Labour still a very Blairite sort of establishment. (Still haven't really looked into the new MPs who might change that, but certainly institutionally little has had time to change.) There's still a strong case that when you really get down to it, the SNP are the leftiest option in Scotland.
If I really cared to press the point, I could probably assemble an argument that Ruth Davidson is left of Tony Blair.
Also, the UK has a track record of disappointment. You can't verifiably prove that we're not in a 1974 situation here - i.e. the left appear to be surging (Indeed, Benn had huge influence on the 1974 manifestos.) and the Scottish Nationalists are playing closer to the centre, but in reality we're all 5 years away from the biggest kick in the teeth in political history. In 1974 you're spooked by nationalism while most of England stands in solidarity with the miners, in 1977 we've got to defend Labour because they're the best we can get, in 1979 we're all dead.
Just because things are good now doesn't provide any justification for the basis of the long-term decision on independence. Rejecting that just because the UK can cater to short-term interests is absolutely insane. Fucking hell, even the "selfishness" of the 1970s oil argument doesn't compare to what we eventually happened to the oil wealth in the UK:
IT WAS PRIVATISED
I'm still unspeakably angry about this. You can only pull it out of the ground once and we pissed it away. The UK was handed a lifeline by god and it threw it away. If Scotland had fucked off and Nauru'd the lot, even that would have been preferable because England would've been spared the upward pressure on the value of the pound to some degree (i.e. mildly helping manufacturing), but no.
That's of course not even to mention the benefits that come from breaking up Britain as an abstract entity, forcing a re-appraisal of the rUK's place in the world.
append "british", "recent" or "our" before "political history" .
What we actually saw was a one-in, one-out situation. The reason why the Labour vote was static in so many seats being that they have spent the better part of two years haemhorraging votes to SCon for not being unionist enough, but then towards the very end a roughly equal number of 2015 SNP voters switched to Labour because of the Corbyn surge.
Anyway, lets celebrate the fact that Blair McDougall managed to lose Labour over 5,000 votes in 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧East Renfrewshire*🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 despite the SNP vote also collapsing.
*Glasgow's wealthy suburb, also believed to have the largest Jewish concentration in all of Scotland.
so you'd rather fuck off and become a neo-lib state and the help the remainder of britain continue being a neo-lib state, rather than having a very real chance of being a left wing union
not even sure why you are on this board if you don't believe in the sustainability of lefty politics, seems to me you give no fucks about the condition of the proles and just want to wave a flag
About time.
Tired of seeing ignorant Englishes commenting on Scottish politics.
I vote for independence cos I thought there was no hope for the UK, now with the J man I'm not so sure.
McDougall definitely had the best poster of the campaign.
VOTE CONSERVATIVE
ᵃᶰᵈ ˢʰᵉ [ˢᵗᵘʳᵍᵉᵒᶰ] ʷᶦᶰˢ ᶦᶰ ᵉᵃˢᵗ ʳᵉᶰ
Literally nobody said this. I'm not going to write long posts if you're not prepared to read them properly
This is as "very real" a chance as 1974. A left-wing union in the long term has thusfar proven to be a pipe dream. We've already seen the work of Attlee and Wilson 90% dismantled, and somehow you think Corbyn's reheating of their promises will be less brittle?
I'm not sure why you're on this board if you're an unironic social democrat. Seems to me you give no fucks about the condition of the proles and just want to watch Portillo moments on BBC 1.
Remember to vote for Blair to get Major out!
yeah let's not even try and make progress lol it's just gonna be undone centrism truly is the only way
the post above you did
you sound just like Holla Forums with their hurr communism always fails muh bread lines nonsense, just because the dream failed before doesn't mean we shouldn't learn from it, and try again
not even sure why you keep going on about blair, if blair was still labour leader i wouldn't even be making this argument
there as been a huge shift in british politics and you are just throwing your head in the sand and saying everything is still the same
I'm not saying don't try to make progress, I'm saying don't reject one chance to shake things up in the long term (by tearing a country in half) because maybe the railways might be renationalised.
No it didn't. At the least charitable you could assume it took as a fait-accompli that both would remain neoliberal regardless.
One should always try again, but one should always be prepared to have their work pissed all over, and use this as fuel to be incredibly spiteful and resentful towards their enemies and show as little respect for the institutions of the country as possible. or something.
The problem is that the dream didn't really fail. Postwar social democracy was broadly a success, people were more or less memed into letting it get dismantled. (In some ways this too was iirc true of Russia, mind you, iirc there was that election they had to rig to stop the communists winning…)
Because I get a strong impression of the left's Labour-party chauvinism from this post. Even those who didn't literally sink so far as to support Blair retain the viewpoint that the only vehicle to improving lives in the British Isles is our Labour party. Elements of the status quo simply have to be accepted (usually tacitly) to the benefit of that party.
There's also that sort of moaning entitlement of the British left. If you want independence so you can nationalise your own railways and paint them green instead of having us nationalise them in London on your behalf, you're just an evil little nationalist and not a real socialist (social democrat lite.) like ME. It simultaneously ignores the irrelevances and the radicalism of splitting the UK in half and it's very grating.
While tepidly hopeful in the short term for Corbyn, in the mid and long term everything is still the same. We live on a miserable planet where nothing nice ever lasts and everything good will slowly decay. Even the sun will burn out eventually. Also I probably have untreated mild depression.
I don't see how it makes a difference who nationalises your railways, other than some form of national pride
I think this is the real root of our disagreement, call me naive but i feel some hope for the UK since saturday, I want every prole in the UK to be freed. Maybe you are right and corbyn is a flash in the pan, and scotland would be better off separated. But maybe corbyn is successful and permanently changes the nature of politics in britain, and scotland leaving means you get left behind.
I dunno only time will tell
But they are. Don't forget that until recently, when Corbyn became it's leader, Labour was neoliberal through and through. And Scotland is a particular Blairist place, where Scottish Labour recommended their own voters to vote for Tories strategically. THE FUCKING NERVE.
Sure now that Corbyn has proven himself despite their best effort, he is pushing and pulling them slightly to the left and now they are on the succdem-neolib line, where, oh the irony, the SNP are.
The point is basically that it doesn't make a difference, with a tinge of resentment at the parochialism of wanting to do it at greater distance, or at the idea it's somehow only an option from Westminster.
I'm not really inclined to believe this either. I'm not actually as pessimistic as it seems about Corbyn in the shortish term because the situation is fluid, but independence would broadly seem to be irrelevant to whether or not things drift left-or-right as a whole. ("If corbyn changes things permanently, odds are Scotland will follow, if Corbyn is a flash in the pan, odds are Scotland might follow to the centre-right but inertia is such that it won't be as dramatic.")
This is particularly the case because a lot of modern Scottish nationalism is basically built on the prior strength of the left-unionist vision of the UK. Borrowing from early parts of PDF related.
The idea of "what it means to be British" was semi-effectively shunted onwards into the America's-poodle role of the Blair era, while Scotland has more of an underlying desire for that consensus, or to protect the torn rags it managed to protect from it's collapse. As such, it's much harder to see Scotland actually moving rightwards. (Even the move to the Tories can better be understood as a move towards overt unionism, although doubtless Scotland has lolberg and petit-bourg components to it, they don't really fall into place so easily.)
I forget where I'm going with this I'm tired and I never did finish reading this pdf.
Maybe it's just because I'm pessimistic, but considering the absolute STATE of the Conservative campaign and they still managed to win leaves me with little hope. I mean, it was truly terrible, one for the history books: fuck old people young people, the NHS, human rights, privacy, foxes. There isn't one group of people they didn't piss off, I truly think they were trying to throw the election. Yet most of England is still fucking blue. Now if they can do that with this disastrous campaign, imagine they kicked out May, put a fresh face on things and tightened up the rhetoric they'd have even more seats. I don't have much hope for England at all.
How are these guys doing? en.wikipedia.org
Independence is pretty fucked, buckos
Yea but it's full of the Scottish so it's still pretty awful :^)
once had some potential
then this man ruined everything with his sex life
This is tommy sheridan, a man who let the SSP crumble because his case against the News of the World was more important to him. Fucking scoundrel.
As far as western countries go the republican parts of Northern Ireland are some of the most class conscious places around. Yeah Sinn Fein are SocDem but a significant amount of people are literal eat the rich socialists that only vote Sinn Fein because "muh united Ireland" and they're stuck in the 20th century.