No Ticker Tape for Corbyn in Scotland

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By Jason Michael

When we were told Jezza was coming to Scotland we were led to believe the country would shake. That never quite happened. No one showed up to see him because we know he has nothing to offer.

No one can deny, not after the crowds chanting his name at the Glastonbury festival, that Jeremy Corbyn – the Chippenham commissar – is a sensation. As Britain’s answer to Bernie Sanders he has rocked the small world of British politics. So powerful was his unexpected surge during the last general election he even had movers and shakers in the Scottish independence movement fawning after him. So when his stage management team declared he would be coming to Scotland we were right to be nervous. “Jezza” has appeal, we can give him that, but did he have enough appeal up here in Scotland to loosen the grip of the independence movement?

We had nothing to fear when David Cameron flounced up with his shirtsleeves rolled up and perched one arse cheek on a table in front of select audiences of his party faithful. Scots have made some disastrous choices at the polls before, but no one was seriously going to go on a merry dance with a man with a penchant for pigs. Corbyn isn’t as much of a swine. Sure, he can be contradictory – supporting the independence of everywhere but Scotland – and a bit of an ethno-nationalist when confronted with Dutch transport operators, but he’s cool – AngryScotland/Salmon told us so. He’s definitely a man with a few surprises up his sleeves.

His intentions were given away by his itinerary. He wasn’t going after the Tories. He was coming for the seats held by the SNP. Now, we have been led to believe that he was coming to Scotland as part of his bid to topple the Conservative’s from government in Westminster. The spin around him in England and Wales is that he is at the forefront of the fight against austerity. Why then would he be sidestepping the Tories in Scotland and trying to weaken the hold of the National Party? He’s a British nationalist, that’s the why. The purpose of his visit to Scotland is to shore up support for the union in those seats where his Scottish allies – the Tories – don’t have a snowballs chance.

Did he manage to draw the crowds in Scotland as he did in England during the summer? Did he sit us all down in 10s and 50s and feed the five thousand? Did he nothing! There was no ticker tape parade for Corbyn here. Watching his Twitter feed over the duration was pure comedy gold. A small, tightly packed audience – mainly composed of the press and the dregs Scottish Labour – huddled together in what looked like a sex club in Glasgow and a show of what appears to be the residents and staff of a retirement home in the Western Isles. Now doesn’t that just remind you of the good old days of ginger guzzling Jim Murphy? It must have been a shock to his system.

There just wasn’t much love for him in Scotland, and why was that? It’s not because we don’t like the man. Polls would indicate we are quite receptive to his message. The problem is that his message is a carbon copy of one with which we have been familiar for a while. It is the message of the SNP and the independence movement. “Yes-ism” is all about social justice and ending austerity. We have been fighting for a better Scotland every bit as much as we have been fighting for an independent Scotland. The two go hand in hand because we have realised there can never be a fairer society in Scotland unless and until Scotland gets shot of Westminster.

Jeremy doesn’t get this of course. He has come up to Scotland trying to sell us what we already have, with the added extras of a Brexit we don’t want, Trident renewal – we really don’t want that either, and a cap-in-hand return to Westminster under him – oh, now, we really don’t want that. So he is left wondering why Scotland stayed at home. No doubt his handlers will tell him it was due to the bad weather. We should have a Yes rally in the next blizzard to show them otherwise.

It’s when we begin to look more closely at the track record of Corbynism that we begin to see the dangers built into this so-called revolution. Had his objective been to defeat the Tories in London and in so doing bring an end to austerity, as he claims, he would have sought natural allies like the SNP and Plaid Cymru – yet he never. What Labour did instead was to vote with the Tories to keep austerity in place and move us ever closer to a hard Brexit that will hurt those worst affected by austerity the most. The bottom line is that Jeremy is not what he cracks up to be.

We’re canny in Scotland. We watched as crowds of desperate people all over England flocked to his rallies looking for answers, but Jeremy doesn’t have the answers. He has nothing but more of the same. Support for him is, admittedly, bringing people back to the centre, and that is a good thing. But the problem is that this move to the centre will only ever have the effect of prolonging the problem. The Westminster system is broken, and by following a man on the promise of a revolution he will not deliver people will be stuck in the same hell as the one they had when they signed up.

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Corbyn asks the SNP to mitigate the austerity he voted for in Westminster

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