Alex Salmond | ukwatch.net

Alex Salmond and Thatcherism

Alex Doherty — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:00:19 +0000

Sir Angus Grossart is to head the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT), which will be responsible for attracting private capital bids for public infrastructure projects. His appointment reveals a great deal about the social and political character of the Scottish National Party (SNP) administration in Edinburgh.

Grossart is the founder, chairman and majority shareholder of investment bank Noble Grossart, the former vice chair of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and the director of numerous companies in the UK, US and Canada. Described by the Times as the “doyen of Edinburgh’s financial community,” he is an owner of a sixteenth century castle and holds a place on the Sunday Times rich list. His nephew, Hamish, is the deputy chair of Scottish-based oil and gas exploration group Cairn Energy.

While in opposition, the SNP under Alex Salmond made great play of being opposed to the Public Private Partnerships/Public Finance Initiatives (PPP/PFI)—a means of backdoor privatisation used by successive Conservative and Labour governments to transform social and infrastructure spending into lucrative and long-term revenue streams for private capital.

However, the Scottish Futures Trust is simply a repackaging of PPP/PFI in line with the needs of the financial sector in Scotland. The Scottish government is unable to issue its own bonds, the SNP’s preference, but the SFT will seek to create consortia of local authorities, private operators and the SFT to sell bonds for specific projects along with other means of finance.

An example of the sort of return being generated by PFIs can be seen in the scheme to rebuild Hairmyres Hospital, near Glasgow. For an outlay of £8.4 million, building company Kier and PPP investment specialist Innisfree expect a return of £145.2 million over 30 years. Innisfree has £715 million worth of investments in more than £8 billion worth of PFI deals in 18 hospitals, 17 education projects, and 5 prison and court projects in the UK.

By contrast, the local health authority, NHS Lanarkshire, made a loss of £15.6 million last year, and was forced to sell £20 million of land to clear its debts.

Grossart’s appointment, hailed in the media as a “coup,” represents a seal of approval from the Scottish financial elite for both the SFT and the SNP administration.

Numerous finance houses and banks are headquartered in Edinburgh. Grossart’s job will be to fix deals with the big operators such as RBS, one of the world’s largest banks. RBS has its own PPP arm, Royal Bank Project Investments Ltd. Douglas Fraser, political editor of the Glasgow Herald, noted approvingly that “the challenge is now for Sir Angus to make the anti-profiteering rhetoric into an attractive package for profit-seeking financiers.”

The SNP’s subservience to the financial establishment is not exactly new. Salmond was an oil economist at RBS for years before becoming SNP leader. The SFT deal comes only a few months after the SNP government attempted to push through a £1 billion golf resort for magnate Donald Trump in defiance of local planning laws and public opposition. The SNP’s central demand is that an independent Scotland should be able to emulate Ireland as a low-tax investment platform.

Yet for many years, the SNP has sought to dress this pro-business agenda up in social democratic garb—a presentation that was only possible due to the right-wing lurch of Labour and the services rendered to the nationalists by the middle class radical groups such as the Scottish Socialist Party, Tommy Sheridan’s Solidarity Movement and the Scottish Greens. All these groups have claimed that an independent Scotland is the means through which socialism can be realised long-term and that an independent capitalist Scotland under the SNP is a first step in that direction that must be supported without precondition.

With the Labour government imploding, Salmond believes that the SNP will be the main beneficiary in Scotland. Consequently, he has become more open in speaking about the real aims of the Scottish administration.

In a recent interview with the Total Politics magazine, Iain Dale asked Salmond, “Ten years ago, the Conservatives were seen as a terrible enemy by the SNP, and they saw you as very left-wing. It seems to me that you have tried to change that and create a very big tent for the SNP.”

Salmond replied, “I suppose I have tried to bring the SNP into the mainstream of Scotland. We have a very competitive economic agenda. Many business people have warmed towards the SNP. We need a competitive edge, a competitive advantage—get on with it, get things done, speed up decision making, reduce bureaucracy. The SNP has a strong social conscience, which is very Scottish in itself. One of the reasons Scotland didn’t take to Lady Thatcher was because of that. We didn’t mind the economic side so much. But we didn’t like the social side at all.”

The SNP—along with much of the political establishment in Scotland—has always sought to distance itself from Thatcherism and its perspective of unbridled free market capitalism and assaults on workers’ social gains.

“Thatcherism” has been portrayed as a peculiarly “English” affair, at odds with what is routinely portrayed as the more just, socially aware “Scottish” national consensus.

Salmond’s incautious admission that he “didn’t mind the economic side” of Thatcherism “so much” blew the gaffe on such claims. Notwithstanding his absurd attempt to separate Tory economic policy from its social consequences, his statement exposed the degree to which the fundamentals of Thatcherism—the gutting of social provision for the personal enrichment of a fabulously wealthy elite—has been embraced across the entire official political spectrum. That is why the next morning, Salmond took the unprecedented step for a First Minister of phoning a radio talk show to claim that he had been misinterpreted.

Salmond has attempted to recover political ground by unveiling the SNP’s proposals for a local income tax to replace the current council tax. Levied by local authorities, the council tax is based on property values. The housing price bubble over the last years—coupled with cuts on social spending—has meant that this tax falls disproportionately harshest on working people.

The SNP has said it intends to abolish the council tax entirely and replace it with an income tax levied at three pence in the pound. It argues that this will save the average family between £350 and £535 a year and has challenged the other parties to veto the measure.

The proposal has to be seen in the context of the growing moves in all the major parties and the business establishment towards some form of greater financial independence for Scotland, so-called fiscal autonomy.

The intended income tax is not a local tax as such. It is a tax set centrally in Edinburgh, which is then parcelled out locally, reducing local authorities to mere conduits for state funding. More fundamentally, the SNP has made clear that the purpose of the new tax is to further ratchet up tensions between Edinburgh and London, in order to serve its strategic goal of independence.

Some £2.5 billion is currently raised under the present council tax, but the SNP’s proposal will bring in just £1.6 billion—a £900 million shortfall. Almost half of this is to be recouped through unspecified savings. But the SNP is also demanding that Scotland continue to receive some £400 million from UK central government that is currently paid in benefits to those too poor to finance the council tax in full—even though the tax will be abolished.

In other words, the SNP’s “redistributive” tax is dependent to a great extent on the UK government and taxes raised on working people in England and Wales. Salmond calculates that this is a win-win situation for his administration. If London agrees, the SNP will reap the benefits in terms of strengthening its popularity. And should London refuse, the SNP believes it will lend credibility to its demands for complete independence in Scotland and even help stoke up anti-Scottish sentiment south of the border.

In the same Total Politics interview, Salmond made clear his preference for a bonfire of national vanities. Asked if he agreed that there “is a resurgence of an acceptable form of English nationalism,” he replied, “I have huge sympathy with the political argument. As you know, by choice, SNP MPs have abstained from every vote on English legislation that does not have an immediate Scottish consequence. If you’re asking me should people in England be able to run their own health service or education system, my answer is yes. They should be able to do it without the bossy interference of Scots Labour MPs…. Because I believe in independence for Scotland, I also believe in independence for England.”

Over the recent period, the Conservative Party—still concentrated predominantly in southern England—has begun to flirt with English nationalism. Sure enough, the right-wing press in England made hay with allegations that with the income tax reform, Scotland was again being subsidised by English taxpayers. In response, Prime Minister Gordon Brown signalled that the Labour government is prepared to concede greater fiscal autonomy to Scotland. In a speech to Scottish business leaders earlier this month, he said there was a “problem” with the fact that the Scottish parliament was not more accountable for its spending.

Thatcher's shadow falls over Alex Salmond

tim — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:44:40 +0000

British politics have for the last thirty years been shaped by Margaret Thatcher, Thatcherism and the legacy of Thatcher’s period in office.

All of the mainstream politicians who have followed her – John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron at a UK level, and Alex Salmond and his Labour predecessors as First Minister in Scotland – have been influenced by her, and their politics shaped, defined and framed by her and her achievements. This has been thrown into sharp focus by recent remarks – and the reaction to them – made by Alex Salmond in an interview for Total Politics with Iain Dale, who thought them so obvious as to be quite uncontroversial.

The fact that the political world we live in has been created by Mrs. Thatcher is well made by Simon Jenkins in his persuasive thesis, ‘Thatcher and Sons’ where he examines the Thatcher legacy and its acceptance by Major, Blair and Brown. This entailed the reconfiguration of politics, the state and polity around a new credo of free market capitalism, deregulation, privatisation, celebration of the super-rich, alongside increased centralisation and an authoritarian, powerful central state.

Blair and Brown both famously courted Margaret Thatcher once they arrived in office; both invited her to No 10 Downing Street, while at the same time overtly accepting, embracing and extending the nature of the Thatcher revolution. While they were doing this, large parts of Labour continued to see Thatcher as a hate figure and Thatcherism as something they totally detested.

This produced a strange kind of almost Alice in Wonderland politics whereby Blair and Brown attempted to send out overt signals to former Tory voters that they understood their concerns, while continuing with her policies and operating within her legacy, and at the same time, offering the pretence that they disagreed with large parts of her legacy by creating a caricature of it: going about three million unemployment or the ‘Black Wednesday’ moment of Major’s government. At its core New Labour was, in the words of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Thatcherism consolidated’.

‘Bathgate No More, Linwood No More’ and Thatcherism North of the Border

The way Thatcherism has been perceived in Scotland has been even more pronounced on the surface, but even more complex and complicated underneath. The combination of Thatcher’s English persona and style, English nationalism and the fact that the Tories were increasingly a small, declining minority of votes, always meant that Thatcherism was never going to win the popularity stakes north of the border. Part of this was no doubt due to Mrs. Thatcher’s personality rubbing Scots up the wrong way, as much as her policies.

The Thatcherite agenda produced north of the border economic and social dislocation with massive de-industrialisation, hardship and poverty, which were interpreted in Scotland increasingly in the 1980s as ‘anti-Scottish’ – something that the North of England, Yorkshire and Wales shared in policy-wise, but could not experience through the same paradigm. The poll tax was important in precipitating this disparity as it was imposed on Scotland first: the country was singled out as a test case a year before the rest of the UK. There was a genuinely proconsular aspect to this, as one of the most Tory of policies was rolled out in the least Tory province, which precipitated anti-English sentiment.

However, as with all things life was a little more complex that the ‘Bathgate no more, Linwood no more’ lament of The Proclaimers – who compared Scotland’s experience of Thatcherism to the Highland Clearances. Scottish people enjoyed many of the benefits of Thatcherism – buying their council houses and privatised shares, while higher public spending continued north of the border – but they just didn’t vote Tory as a result of it. Instead, the majority of Scottish opinion, aided by the grotesque imposition of the poll tax, moved into a position of feeling both the ‘victim’ of and ‘morally superior’ to, the rest of the UK.

Scottish politics for the eighteen years of Tory rule was characterised by opposition politicians – Labour, Lib Dem, SNP – trying to outdo each other in their opposition and rhetoric towards Thatcher. This was an era of symbols and shibboleths which defined the nation’s resistance to Thatcherism: Linwood, Invergordon, Ravenscraig and Rosyth. All but the last were closed under the Conservatives and each cause, campaign and crisis was meant to signify that the Union might be under threat. Two politicians who excelled in this climate were Gordon Brown and Alex Salmond.

Understanding Thatcherism in the post-Thatcher Age

The election of New Labour and acceptance and consolidation of much of the Thatcher legacy, led to Scottish politics moving on as well, but with the continuation of an even more complex Alice in Wonderland set of attitudes. With the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, both Scottish Labour and the SNP had to emphasise their ‘Scottish’ credentials and their difference. They did this by stressing that they were more left-wing and social democratic than parties south of the border, and continuing with the language of detestation towards Thatcher and Thatcherism. While they presented themselves in this way, both parties moved in the same direction as New Labour and came under the same influence: accepting the logic and values of the post-Thatcherite environment, while pretending otherwise.

Thus, we come to the importance of Alex Salmond’s recent remarks on Margaret Thatcher. Salmond stated:

The SNP has a strong, beating social conscience, which is very Scottish in itself. One of the reasons Scotland didn’t take to Lady Thatcher was because of that. It didn’t mind the economic side so much. But we didn’t like the social side at all.

He then had to qualify his remarks almost immediately, taking the unprecedented (and slightly embarrassing) step as First Minister of Scotland of phoning in to BBC Radio Scotland’s Saturday ‘Morning Extra’ programme to state:

I’m well on the record as never having approved of either Margaret Thatcher’s social or economic policies – that’s clear if you look at the interview.

He also commented that he would not be following Gordon Brown (and Tony Blair before him) of inviting Margaret Thatcher for tea. Subsequently Salmond said about his remarks:

I was commenting on why Scots, in particular, were so deeply resentful of Thatcher and I think here her social message epitomised in the unfair poll tax and her comments of ‘no such thing as society’ cut against a very Scottish grain of social conscience. That doesn’t mean that the nation liked her economic policies, just that we liked her lack of concern for social consequences even less.

Now it does not take a Kremlinologist to work out the difference between Salmond’s first and last statements. The quote that Scots ‘didn’t mind the economic side so much’ is a tacit acceptance and endorsement of Thatcherism’s economic agenda; in his follow up comments Salmond attempted to quote his ‘economic and social side’ remarks and deny that they were in any way support for Thatcherite economics.

What was as revealing was the reaction to the remarks. The ‘cybernat’ community tried to defend Salmond saying this was not an endorsement of Thatcherite economics; that New Labour has more embraced it, and so on. Labour politicians attacked Salmond’s ‘own goal’ and ‘praise of Thatcherism’. Most interesting of all was the comments from some of Salmond’s critics in the Nationalist community. Jim Fairlie, a senior figure in the party in the 1980s called the remarks ‘a qualified acceptance of Mrs. Thatcher’s economic policies’ and talked of Salmond’s ‘drift to the right’. Jim Sillars, SNP victor of the 1988 Govan by-election commented:

It is revisionist nonsense for Alex Salmond to suggest that our society only objected to her social policies, while we accepted her economic ones.

What is going on here is that Salmond has violated the first cardinal rule of Scottish politics after Thatcher: that is namely to vilify, degrade and denounce Thatcher and Thatcherism with every word in your vocabulary, while being influenced, shaped and following in her footsteps. To be flattering, he made the ‘political error’ of being too relaxed and speaking with a degree of honesty.

All of Scotland’s mainstream political parties have had their policies and philosophies altered by Thatcherism, while at the same time, they continue to articulate a social democratic centre-left politics which has been diluted and diminished by Thatcherism; you can even include the Scottish Tories in this equation as they have been consistently devoid of a right-wing agenda and gone with the grain of Scottish politics. When you combine this mix with the national question, Scottish centre-left politicians have to emphasise even more than south of the border, their distinctiveness and moral disgust at the world Mrs. Thatcher brought about.

The ‘Catch-All’ Nature of the Scottish Nationalists

Alex Salmond’s remarks and the controversy they have caused have to be seen in this context. He has inadvertently blown open the Alice in Wonderland mentality and Janus-like attitude which exists across the whole of the UK and the political spectrum about Thatcher and Thatcherism, which is just more acute and sensitive north of the border.

The SNP like Labour north and south of the border are a broad coalition of social democratic sentiment which has acquiesced with Thatcherism and the neo-liberal project. It is not for nothing that the SNP, like Scottish Labour and New Labour, is ominously silent on the central issue of political economy. Salmond’s acceptance of the dominant economic order was evident in remarks in the same interview:

I suppose I have tried to bring the SNP into the mainstream of Scotland. We have a very competitive economic agenda. Many business people have warmed towards the SNP. We need a competitive edge, a competitive advantage. That side of SNP politics – get on with it, get things done, speed up decision making, reduce bureaucracy.

These remarks reveal the ‘catch-all’ nature of the SNP’s political agenda, and the reality that for all its popularity, statecraft and progressive elements which have been on show since it came to office, social democracy and challenging the vested interests of the global order, are just as unsafe in the SNP’s hands as they are in Scottish Labour’s.

The political project of the SNP is a ‘Scotland plc’ – not that different from the kind of economy and society envisioned by Labour modernisers, only independent. That is one of the defining features of Scottish politics: the lack of a real, distinct set of political differences between Labour and the SNP beyond independence. And that leads us to the second cardinal rule of Scottish politics after Thatcher: because of that lack of substantive difference, Labour and SNP go at it upping the ante and vitriol between each other.

The current Nationalist vision of the world is one where a ‘national project’ will see an independent Scotland and its government align with business and corporate interests to promote the nation and compete in the global economy. Jim Mather, Enterprise Minister, an ardent marketer, once commented: ‘Any notion that an independent Scotland would be left-wing is delusional nonsense’; Mike Russell, Environment Minister, penned a book ‘Grasping The Thistle’ one year before becoming a minister, filled with the most fundamental free-market proposals.

Alex Salmond, once a radical left-winger in the days when he was an economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland in the 1980s, has now undergone a full conversion to celebrating and advocating corporate interests. This can be seen in Salmond’s fully fledged support for Donald Trump’s luxury golf development in North East Scotland, or his consistent advocacy for the corporate interests of the Royal Bank of Scotland: the fifth largest banking group in the world. Sometimes it seems as if Salmond sees the interests of RBS and the Scottish economy as being one and the same; this is a bank which employs 8,500 people in Edinburgh.

1979 And All That: The Power of the BBC Consensus

There is a larger set of questions for Scottish and UK politics posed by this episode. How long are politicians in Scotland and the UK going to continue being defined and shaped by Thatcher and Thatcherism? For how long are we going to continue to allow them to act in the two-faced, hypocritical, talking one way and acting another manner towards the Thatcher legacy?

Alex Salmond inadvertently has hit a raw nerve with his recent comments. He has shown the lack of straightforwardness and honesty that lies within the SNP acceptance and continuation of Thatcherism, that is much like Labour’s. By doing so has exposed the narrowness of the SNP’s rationale as a party to the ‘left’ of Scottish Labour. 1979 was a long, long, long time: over a generation ago. Yet, its myths, folklores, triumphs and limitations still shape our politics, our political debate and political horizons and imaginations.

The current political, economic and social impasse has a direct linkage and causal relationship to the events and forces which emerged in 1979 and this cannot go on forever. However, no political settlement just collapses because of the weight of its own internal contradictions, but requires a counter-movement and set of stories. It took over thirty years before the previous watershed – 1945 – was challenged and overthrown. But that was part of an international, neo-liberal mobilisation for a new global arrangements. Despite the limitations of Thatcherism and flaws in the neo-liberal worldview, of which the ‘credit crunch’ is the latest example, we don’t yet have any countervailing economic and social strategy.

Instead, we still live in the world created by Thatcherism: the world of the BBC consensus: Blair, Brown and Cameron (with Alex Salmond providing a supporting role). It is aptly titled for it is comprehensively signed up to by the influential and powerful in the UK whether they are in politics, the corporate world or the media. The bandwidth of what is politically possible and imaginable is defined by these elites, and what passes for their commentary unquestioningly supports the present political, economic and social order.

We should be grateful to Alex Salmond for being relatively honest about this and scornful of the hypocrisy of those in the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats who want to deny their subordination to the Thatcherite hegemony. It is up to progressives and democrats of every and no party to challenge this state of affairs. We have to push and pull, dream and work, to devise new counter-movements and widen our political horizons and imaginations from their current straightjacket.

Tommy Sheridan pitches to the Scottish National Party

tim — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:30:53 +0000

One question posed by the recent by-election in Glasgow East is just how long it will be before Tommy Sheridan joins the Scottish Nationalist Party?

Sheridan is the former leader the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) and now heads the breakaway Solidarity, Scotland’s Socialist Movement. The two parties split in September 2006, after Sheridan took out an ultimately successful defamation case against Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, over allegations that he attended a swingers club, which the SSP leadership refused to back. Both parties stood candidates in Glasgow East, which saw a humiliating defeat for Labour by the SNP with a 26.1 percent swing in what was Labour’s 26th safest seat.

Solidarity was formed by Sheridan’s closest allies within the SSP and backed by Scottish members of the Socialist Workers Party and the rival Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI). With no programmatic differences between the two parties, support for Sheridan was based largely on the belief that his high profile would provide the best means of maintaining the influence won under his leadership by the SSP in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, where it had six MSPs. In the event, neither party won enough votes in the 2007 May elections to gain a seat, and most of their support collapsed and went over to the SNP.

Sheridan even then made clear that he was in favour of an SNP victory. But the most striking feature of the Glasgow East by-election campaign waged by Sheridan is how he took every opportunity to make what amounted to a sales pitch on his own behalf, to the SNP.

During a BBC “Newsnight Scotland” roundtable interview of representatives of the smaller parties in the early stages of the campaign, Sheridan, speaking for Solidarity, opened his remarks by stating baldly, “If I am being absolutely honest, I hope the SNP would win rather than Labour. If we are honest, we are fighting for third place….”

Later, he returned to his theme, stating, “We’re not going to win the election, we want to take third…but if you put me on the spot and say who would you rather win, I would rather Gordon Brown got a political kicking….”

Sheridan made no mention of his party’s candidate, Tricia McLeish. While he made references to “big business parties,” at no time did he make any explicit criticism of the SNP.

Sheridan’s proposal that voters could give Gordon Brown “a kicking” by voting SNP dovetailed with the campaign of the SNP, which played down its demand for Scottish independence due to the unpopularity of the idea of independence with the working class.

Solidarity literature distributed during the campaign portrayed the party as left advisers to the SNP. A two-page article, “SNP in Power—One Year On,” took up half of its free news sheet.

In this article, Phil Stott and Steve Arnott pledged that “Solidarity will continue to welcome positive reforms from the SNP and say why and when we don’t think they go far enough; we will criticise the SNP when they put the interest of business and the wealthy before the interests of the majority of society, and we will point out consistently that it is the left leaning measures of the SNP that have so far also proved the most popular.”

Arnott and Stott explicitly aim to build Solidarity as a left cover to the SNP, but Sheridan’s uncritical praise for the SNP seems to be generating tensions within Solidarity.

At a Solidarity eve of poll meeting, in response to a question posed by myself, Sheridan made clear just how far removed he is from socialist politics.

In his speech, Sheridan noted that “the SNP is now the party of protest. SNP is to the left of Labour, so is Glasgow East.”

Voters, Sheridan went on, should seek to pressure the SNP. They should ask the SNP, “...are you supporting public ownership of oil?”

Speaking from the audience, this writer noted that Sheridan had “highlighted bad social conditions in Glasgow. The same conditions hold in London, Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, and Hartlepool. A unified struggle by working class in Britain against poverty, inequality, the consequences of war in Iraq, the attack on democratic rights, and all the policies of the social elite for whom Labour and the Tories speak, is needed. In what sense does your proposal of Scottish independence advance this?”

Sheridan replied with a forthright call for Scottish “nationhood” on the basis of capitalism. Echoing the SNP’s long-standing perspective of “an independent Scotland in Europe,” he stated that the European Union “has recently expanded to incorporate 10 new nations with a lower population than Scotland. Scotland has the economic strength to survive.”

“Internationalism,” he added, “is ‘inter’ and ‘nationalism’...a collective of nationalisms”.

Thus, rather than expressing the strivings of the working class to overcome national divisions and to take forward a world struggle for the replacement of the profit system, Sheridan’s conception of “internationalism” is simply an alliance between the bourgeoisie of smaller regions and powers. This outlook defines his indifference towards the working class in the rest of Britain. His outlook is entirely nationalist. He concluded his reply by declaring, “I don’t feel British or part of British imperialism…. Labour is a British party.”

Sheridan has no similar reservations when identifying with a smaller imperialist nation, Scotland, and with the governing Scottish party, the SNP.

Commenting on the result in Glasgow East, Sheridan proclaimed, “This is a historic victory in Glasgow East for the SNP and I congratulate John Mason. Let us be clear it is a victory for a left of centre party which carries on Glasgow’s radical tradition….”

Sheridan is a man with an eye on the main chance. He is someone who won the admiration of sections of the Scottish establishment during his years in the Scottish parliament for his tireless promotion of Holyrood. He clearly has aspirations to revive his parliamentary career. Initially, he is attempting to do that by aligning Solidarity as close as possible with the SNP and, should circumstances allow, by joining it and acting as its left face.

Sheridan is still facing perjury charges as part of the fallout from the libel case he pursued against Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World. A major legal and police operation has subsequently been mounted against him for his humiliating defeat of the media giant for securing $200,000 compensation. Sheridan’s insistence on fighting the case, against his own party’s advice, split the SSP in two and saw SSP members giving evidence against him.

Defending the good name of “family man” Sheridan from lurid allegations was, clearly, more important to him than the very existence of his own party. For this was a question of maintaining “Brand Sheridan” and safeguarding his own future career.

The SSP, however, still has no differences of principle with Sheridan and Solidarity. Like Solidarity, the SSP proposes a “Scottish socialist republic” as a means to provide a platform for the social reforms once proposed by the Labour Party. Both parties support Scottish independence as proposed by the SNP as a necessary stage towards this goal.

Like Solidarity, the SSP bears full responsibility for the ability of the SNP to benefit from the collapse of the Labour Party, as expressed most dramatically in Labour’s latest by-election disaster. They always refer to the split with him as “a tragedy,” which prevented a more effective struggle for their own nationalist and reformist politics. Their struggle is reduced to which is the bigger and more viable vehicle for championing independence.

The SSP’s analysis of the campaign, authored by Richie Venton, focused heavily on the fact that its candidate and former MSP Frances Curran polled a few more votes than Solidarity in Glasgow East—555 compared to 512. This was most important for them in reversing the relative position of the two parties last year.

However, their line was exactly the same as that of Solidarity. Venton sought to misrepresent the huge swing against the Labour Party as representing support for independence. He admitted that “There was not widespread, overt, explicit talk on the streets of this being a vote on independence.” But then, echoing Sheridan and the SNP, he went on to assert that “it clearly is a clash of contrasting opinions on the Westminster Labour government compared to the Holyrood SNP government—and is a massive impetus towards independence.”

The SSP will continue to make its occasional denunciations of Sheridan and decry the SNP as a capitalist party. But it cannot distance itself from that fact that he was the party’s leader and public face for close to two decades. And it is within the opportunist and saltire waving milieu of the SSP that Sheridan’s politics germinated and bore fruit. As to his current allies in the SWP, they will find their alliance with the “best known and greatly respected” Sheridan to be a perhaps greater political embarrassment than their disastrous relationship with George Galloway.