MALCOLM BURNS wonders whether the Scottish Nationalist win might finally force Labour to take stock north of the border.
GREETINGS from the new Caledonia! Well, maybe not quite. We are all still trying to come to terms with what really happened in the Scottish elections in May.
This is just my take, as an active Labour Party member and a socialist now living with a new minority nationalist government.
What I am going to write - I actually think that the SNP government is a breath of fresh air and, so far, appears much more democratic and open than its predecessor - will be dismissed as an illusion by many Labour supporters.
So, I am going to start with a quote about the May election.
"This was a campaign that showed Labour at its best - Tony Blair magnificent, leading from the front, finding exactly the right words, always able to change the political weather."
That grand fantasy, that touchstone of self-delusion, is nothing less than the post-election assessment by Blair's own in-house polling guru Philip Gould. You could find the full insane monty in the May 14 New Statesman.
With advisers and hubris like this, it is not surprising that Britain is mired in the disaster of Iraq.
Oh dear. Where to start? It's almost as though Blair had actually won us the Scottish elections, despite our whinging Jock uselessness.
Labour lost. The SNP won. Gould's "arrogant and presumptuous" Alex Salmond is first minister, capably exercising executive power. Gould's "street-fighting" Jack McConnell is somewhat shell-shocked - gamely still leading the opposition, but with no power left, not even in local government apart from Glasgow and North Lanarkshire. Hell will freeze over before they go, McConnell probably hopes.
Maybe I just feel more cheerful about everything because Gould's "magnificent" Blair is now our leader no more, effectively forced out of office, despite the tedious extended exit. Good riddance.
In fact, so far, the new Scottish government has not put a foot wrong.
What did you expect? Chaos in the streets? A sudden cataclysmic parting of the largest British isle, between Gretna and Berwick?
In Scotland, the shallowness of our official Labour campaign could exactly be measured by the fears which were spun in desperate tabloid campaigns. The election-day Sun splash showed an SNP noose around Scotland's neck.
Fear may indeed have shored up the Labour vote in the last day or two. But it looks increasingly irrational, as the SNP government effortlessly eclipses the previous administration in being sensible, capable and even likeable - yes, Salmond's irritating smug duckling has turned into, if not a swan, then at least a statesperson. A new statesman, in fact.
The election was never really about independence, which is anyway not supported by the majority of Scots. Salmond's masterstroke was to effectively remove the issue through the promise of a referendum.
Now, we are not talking about independence anymore. But we are doing politics - and some of it opens to the left.
I know that we are far from abolishing Trident or cancelling its replacement. But I am glad that our new government has that as a policy.
I am an agnostic in the debate about restructuring the NHS which poses a few big centres of excellence against many local general hospitals. Why can't we have sufficient of each?
But I know that I support the aim of ending privatisation in the NHS in Scotland. I know that I support the aim of ending PFI/PPP in public-sector projects.
I should also say that Salmond has been sensible and wise in responding to the recent Glasgow airport bomb attack and has calmly and astutely included and represented the whole Scottish people in his response. He also opposed the war, which adds to his credibility.
I hear old new Labour hacks - even those who recently were Holyrood ministers with executive power themselves, even some still in power in Westminster - desperately waiting and hoping for the SNP train to come off the rails. But I just don't see Salmond gifting power back to a hackneyed McNuLab. Labour needs to change to win Scotland back.
True, a lot of the SNP promises and decisions already taken will be costly to implement. Doubtless, there will be painful cuts or cancellations to pay for some of these. I do also know that the SNP is pinning unrealistic and quite right-wing hopes on big capital and low corporation tax.
That sounds familiar. We don't have a left-wing government in Scotland and I am under no illusions.
I have the impression that many beleaguered socialists down south, whether Labour supporters or not, have over the years harboured hopes that there was a left-wing lion in the far north which would rise and show the way for the whole of Albion.
True, the SSP as led by Tommy Sheridan had five MSPs in the last Scottish Parliament. But hope in the shape of the SSP was always illusory. This is the official SSP post-election assessment.
"We fought in hope and we got beat. Big time. But (the) electoral rout does not mean that the Scottish Socialist Party is a spent force, or that we're about to implode."
Dream on. Even the Socialist Labour Party, which has no organisation at all in Scotland, got more votes than the SSP. And that wasn't a lot.
The Labour Party needs to learn the lessons of the defeat in Scotland. It's worth looking at the refreshingly realistic approach being taken by Labour in Wales, where - much to the chagrin of the party leadership at Westminster - Rhodri Morgan has been negotiating a coalition with Plaid Cymru on the sensible, even modestly left-wing, One Wales platform.
In fact, Scottish Labour could and should have had more sensible, even left-wing, policies before the last election, of the kind regularly voted for in trade union and even Labour Party conferences.
Labour lost in Scotland because our generals were out of touch with the Scottish people, having even failed to deliver for many of our core voters - percentage turnout in many safe Labour seats in the election was in the low thirties.
The SNP, cleverly led by Salmond, exploited Scottish Labour's hopeless enslavement by the London machine.
Labour needs to change. And the left in the Labour Party and the unions - north and south of the border - must lead that change.
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