For all that has been written and said about Jeremy Corbyn bringing a new type of socialism to the ranks of the Labour Party one thing became abundantly clear on his recent tour of Scotland. Jeremy Corbyn is just as much a tory fan as Tony Blair or Gordon Brown.<\/p>\n
For the Tories to be defeated at the next election, they must lose seats, that\u2019s just a simple fact!<\/p>\n
So where does the blessed Jezza target? Labour reckon they need to take 18 seats in Scotland to win the next election and each and every one of them is held by the SNP! Now just a simple piece of arithmetic tells you that even if the bearded wonder\u2019s dreams come true, taking 18 seats off the SNP does not reduce the tory benches by a single one. Not, for example, Stirling or Ochil which fell to the Tories largely on the back of Kezzia\u2019s \u201canyone but the SNP\u201d and were held by Labour until 2015.<\/p>\n
The Tory grip on the keys of 10 Downing St remains completely unaffected!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s blindingly obvious that Corbyn is more concerned with fighting the SNP rather than the tories and for me that makes him a traitor to the working class in all of the UK, not just in Scotland. Workers in Wales, N Ireland and England will be sold out just as much as those in Scotland on the sacrificial altar of Labour\u2019s blind, unthinking ideological hatred of the SNP.<\/p>\n
The Spectator said \u201cMuch to the upset of the Nats, the 18 seats Corbyn will be targeting on the trip are all held by the SNP \u2013 rather than the common enemy of the Tories.\u201d \u00a0<\/em>Read more at: The Spectator<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Nothing is clearer than this; Jeremy Corbyn would rather have a Tory MP in Government rather than an SNP MP highlighting the alternatives and that for me makes him a traitor! Sadly the tories are not a \u201ccommon enemy\u201d for Corbyn\u2019s Labour in Scotland.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a simple point which you might expect a potential PM to understand. The Tories have 13 seats in Scotland which helps the Tories get to 317, combined with the bigots of the DUP\u2019s 10 seats a total of 327 which is a majority in a House of 650 MPs. Ok a very small majority but still a majority especially since Sinn Fein do not take up their 7 seats. Effectively even with every other MP voting in the same lobby the Government has an effective 327 –\u00a0 316 majority.<\/p>\n So to defeat the Tories, Labour need to take either some of those DUP seats and they don\u2019t even run candidates in N Ireland far less have a chance of winning some. Or they need to reduce the number of Tories by winning their seats! Replacing 18 SNP MPs with 18 Labour MPs does nothing to reduce the Tories numbers or the Government majority. You might have thought this was electoral arithmetic 101 but it seems to be beyond the capacity of Labour\u2019s ideologues to comprehend.<\/p>\n While I despaired of the SNP\u2019s \u201conly we can stop the tories\u201d message in June\u2019s General Election, it pales into insignificance as I watch this utter futility from Corbyn. Instead of helping to build an effective anti tory majority, he is solely focused on gazing at his own political navel and the people who will pay the price for this selfish stupidity are the ordinary working men and women, the pensioners, and those on benefits who so desperately need political leadership which puts their interests ahead of narrow minded ideology. Corbyn and Labour are selling those people out in favour of their own small interests and ambitions. And all the while ignoring the Labour\/Tory collusion across the Council Chambers of Scotland.<\/p>\n In a quite disgraceful speech to the Labour Conference earlier this year, Corbyn said \u201cScotland would have to join the euro, install checkpoints on the border with England and endure \u201cturbo-charged austerity\u201d<\/em> if it decides to become independent in the wake of the Brexit vote. Read more at:\u00a0The Essential Daily Briefing<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Corbyn knew this to be a lie on the euro and recent events have shown that if there is no need for a border between N Ireland and Eire then there is no need for one between Scotland and England. And someone really ought to tell him that the Scottish Government under the SNP is doing much more to fight austerity than either his miserable parliamentary party or the Labour controlled Welsh Assembly.<\/p>\n In a sustained, brutal and accurate critique of Corbyn\u2019s tour of Scotland. Progressive Scotland said \u201cIn their general election manifesto the SNP pledged to fight for an end to the two child tax credits cap, and for Universal Credit roll-out to be halted to prevent further cuts, and also for the benefits freeze to be lifted. Conversely, Corbyn\u2019s Labour manifesto only committed to ending the rape clause and long wait times for receipt of Universal Credit. Indeed the Resolution Foundation confirmed that Labour\u2019s manifesto would only have reversed a quarter of the cuts from\/still to come from these policies. Whereas the SNP\u2019s manifesto pledges would have reversed\/prevented 100% of these billions worth of cuts. Incidentally the SNP manifesto also argued for reinstatement of the Work Allowance, and while Labour\u2019s mentioned it, they made no commitment to its reinstatement. Labour\u2019s abysmal timidity in addressing real poverty can only be described as Tory-lite on welfare.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cLabour in government is worse still. While the SNP has mitigated the bedroom tax, housing benefit cuts for 18-21 year olds, and lifted the public sector pay cap, the Welsh government has mitigated\/reversed none of these austerity policies. All while Corbyn accuses the SNP of being a \u2018conveyor belt for austerity\u2019 no less (just another example of how Labour rhetoric tends to depart from reality). Click to read\u00a0Corbyn’s Offer to Scotland<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n If you listen carefully you can just hear the pleading voice saying \u201cLeave it out Rodney, Jezza is nearly the real thing. This time next year Anas Sarwar will be a Socialist\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For all that has been written and said about Jeremy Corbyn bringing a new type of socialism to the ranks of the Labour Party one thing became abundantly clear on his recent tour of Scotland. Jeremy Corbyn is just as much a tory fan as Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. For the Tories to be defeated at the next election, they must lose seats, that\u2019s just a simple fact! So where does the blessed Jezza target? Labour reckon they need to take 18 seats in Scotland to win the next election and each and every one of them is held by the SNP! Now justRead More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1933"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1936,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933\/revisions\/1936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe SNP has also managed to implement universal policies such as free tuition fees, while Labour in Wales have instead decided to raise them, and that\u2019s despite saying they would look into scrapping tuition fees before the general election<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n