In Scots Gaelic it is known as An Ruadh-Gleann. You don’t need to be a linguist to translate it.
The ‘Red Glen’ hit the headlines in the early hours of Friday morning when the Labour Party triumphed over the SNP in the Rutherglen and Hamilton by-election.
The swing to Labour was 20 percentage points, and everyone went giddy. Immediately there was talk of a Labour landslide in the next general election and the eclipse of the SNP in Scotland, where it was predicted to lose dozens of seats at Westminster.
In Scotland, where the media is dominated by unionists (of the British rather than Irish variety), obituaries were being crafted for the current SNP leader Humza Yousaf, and the press was bigging up Kate Forbes – the fundamentalist Presbyterian former finance minister who is seen as his arch-rival.
Seasoned political observers will know to take by-election results with a pinch of salt, and there were particular reasons why Rutherglen voters might want to give the SNP a bloody nose. But it is clear that the momentum in Scotland, and in the rest of Britain (surely it cannot claim to be Great any more), is moving towards Labour.
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Clarity needed from Keir Starmer on poll plan
For Irish nationalists, the troubles besetting the SNP are disappointing to say the least.
Dominated now by English nationalists, the United Kingdom has run its course. Scottish secession would have been the coup de grace.
To achieve independence the SNP needed to win over the middle ground. It has been remarkably successful. With the delivery of competent government in Edinburgh, it was able to wipe out Scottish Labour in Westminster. At Holyrood, every parliament since 2007 has resulted in the election of a SNP first minister.
But the wheels are coming off the independence bus. The SNP no longer looks like a safe bet. It is mired in scandal and the subject of a police investigation, there is no agreement about the right route to independence, and hubris has set in. Voters are beginning to think the SNP is more interested in itself than in the voters.
That’s what did for Labour in Scotland.
Although there are many Labour supporters in Scotland who are pro-independence, the party is solidly unionist. That’s hardly a surprise given Scottish seats in parliament sustained successive Labour governments.
Keir Starmer’s hope is that Scottish seats will help sustain him in power too.
This week in Liverpool Starmer is setting out his prospectus for the next general election. The Conservatives’ implosion last week in Manchester has made his job easier.
Let there be no doubt, the annihilation of the Conservative Party at the polls is in everyone’s best interests (probably including their own), but the prospect of a Starmer government is alarming.
He has demonstrated that he is prepared to do whatever is necessary to get himself into Downing Street: pandering to English nationalists by wrapping himself in the union flag (Labour may still sing the song, but no longer is the ‘Red flag flying here’); embracing Brexit; and bumming about his ‘unionist’ credentials regardless of the negative impact on politics here or, for that matter, in Scotland.
Not only has Starmer ruled out the prospect of a border poll during the next Labour government, he has aligned himself with the lunatic fringes of loyalism, and said he would campaign to keep Northern Ireland within the UK.
At a stroke, Starmer has compromised any claim that a government led by him would be an honest broker in future discussions about the politics of these islands; he has tied his putative Secretary of State’s hands behind his back; and he has alienated those on this side of the Irish Sea who want to see a progressive government in power in London.
History has shown that politicians with naked ambition are not to be trusted. If he would sell his granny for a townhouse in central London, what would Starmer do to us?
