Britain never had a reckoning with the fascists in our midst

In the 1930s the British upper classes were absolutely riddled with fascists and antisemites.

There was Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, which boasted tens of thousands of members, and loads of high-profile supporters including the Daily Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere (great-grandfather of the current owner), who was a personal friend of Adolf Hitler.

There were fascist-sympathisers throughout the aristocracy and the royal family. We've all seen the pictures of Edward teaching the young future queen Elizabeth to do Nazi salutes in the gardens of Balmoral Castle (despite royalist efforts to censor them).

The Tory party was particularly infested with fascists, with loads of Tory MPs and lords signed up to secretive organisations aimed at promoting fascist and antisemitic ideologies.

The Anglo-German Fellowship was dedicated to fostering stronger relations with Nazi Germany. It boasted dozens of Tory party politicians amongst its membership, as well as Bank of England director Frank Cyril Tiarks (who was also a member of the British Union of Fascists), Bank of England governor Montagu Norman, Admiral Sir Barry Domvile, and Geoffrey Dawson who was editor of The Times.

Tory members of the Anglo-German Fellowship included Peter Agnew, Lawrence Dundas, Ernest Bennett, Robert Bird, Robert Tatton Bower, Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, Robert Vaughan Gower, Thomas "Loel" Guinness, Norman Hulbert, Archibald James, Alfred Knox, John Macnamara, Thomas Moore, Assheton Pownall, Frank Sanderson, Duncan Sandys, Murray Sueter, Charles Taylor, Ronald Tree, Lord Brocket, Lord Galloway, the Earl of Glasgow, Lord Mount Temple, Lord Londonderry, Lord Nuffield, Lord Redesdale, Lord Rennell, and the Duke of Wellington.

The Anglo-German Fellowship was supported by a propaganda operation called The Link, headed up by the traitor Barry Domville.

There was also the Imperial Fascist League which was led by the virulent antisemite Arnold Leese, who continued propagandising in favour of Nazi Germany deep into the Second World War from a series of hideouts.

Then there was the truly despicable Right Club which sought to drive Jewish people out of public life, founded by the Tory MP Archibald Ramsay.

The Right Club attracted a load of high profile establishment figures, including the 5th Duke of Wellington, Lord Redesdale, Lord Lymington, Arnold Leese, A. K. Chesterton, George Henry Drummond, the 2nd Duke of Westminster, Tory MP John Hamilton Mackie, and William Joyce (who went on to become Lord Haw-Haw).

The Right Club finally collapsed in 1940 when they were discovered plotting to undermine the British war effort by stealing secret cables between Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt, with the intention of leaking them.

And let's not forget that the widely-celebrated Tory MP Nancy Astor was one of the leaders of the fascist-sympathising Cliveden Set.

Tories, royals, capitalists, and establishment elitists adored Nazi Germany because the first thing Adolf Hitler did when he came to power was to send all the socialists, communists, anarchists, trade unionists, and other assorted leftists to the concentration camps.

They saw fascism as the perfect means of preserving their own wealth, power and privilege, through the ruthless persecution of the political left.

A small minority of the most egregiously pro-fascist figures like Barry Domville, Arnold Leese, Oswald Mosley, and Archibald Ramsay were interned as national security threats during the Second World War, and Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was captured and executed for treason in 1946.

However the vast majority of these establishment fascists were allowed to keep their positions of power and influence in the upper echelons of British society throughout the Second World War, and long into the post-war period.

Loads of these aristocratic fascists were even handed important promotions in the post-war period, and lavished with establishment honours like knighthoods and seats in the unelected House of Lords.

Is anyone really naïve enough to believe that all of these people simply gave up their extreme-right, antisemitic, and rabidly anti-left politics, despite having suffered absolutely no punishment whatever for holding such disgusting beliefs, even after our cities had been pounded to rubble by the people they'd been championing?

Of course they didn't. They just learned to hide their despicable extreme-right political views more carefully.

This abject post-war failure to stamp fascists out of public life is one of the big reasons why there's still a disturbing and powerful seam of fascist ideology within Britain's grotesque establishment class.

You look at the racism of the British tabloid press and their constant scapegoating of immigrants; the revocation of British rights from Commonwealth citizens in the 1970s; Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech; the anti-gay hysteria of the 1980s; the decades-long campaign of blacklisting of left-leaning journalists from the BBC; the rampant racism within institutions of state like the Metropolitan Police; the casual disregard for the millions of victims of Britain's imperialist war-mongering; the systematic demonisation of all left-wing political figures; the extreme-right ultranationalism that drove Brexit over the winning line; the fetishisation of nationalist symbolism and the military; the idolisation of disgustingly antisemitic Nazi-sympathisers like Nancy Astor; the massive blacklists of trade union activists across numerous industrial sectors; the ongoing systematic persecution of disabled people; Theresa May's unlawfully racist "Hostile Environment" and the Windrush Scandal; the constant right-wing agitation for the destruction of our human rights; Boris Johnson's depraved "let the bodies pile high" attitude to the plight of vulnerable people during the pandemic; and Priti Patel's deportation of refugees to Rwanda ...

The reason the British establishment class is so rotten is that we never had a reckoning with the people who wanted Britain to emulate Nazi Germany.

Instead we let them keep their positions of power and influence, and quietly seep their disgusting fascist ideology into the fabric of British society.

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OR

The kinder, gentler gaslighters

Remember when Jeremy Corbyn said he wanted a find a less abusive way of doing politics?

And how the commentariat class absolutely ridiculed him for it, using the phrase "kinder gentler politics" whenever anyone from the left as much as used a swear word, despite Corbyn himself remaining calm, polite, and dignified in the face of undoubtedly the most concerted UK media vilification campaign in living memory.

The political establishment class and corporate media hack pack worked together to whip up raging firestorms of anti-left hatred; they accused Corbyn of disrespecting veterans by not bowing deeply enough at the Cenotaph; the next year they faked photos of Corbyn supposedly dancing at the Cenotaph; they faked photos of him wearing a Russian-style hat on a Kremlin background; they endlessly platformed every deranged anti-Corbyn ranter they could find; they spliced the wrong answers onto different questions to create outrage-mongering 'fake news' (and kept their jobs when caught red-handed); they derided Corbyn's "Chairman Mao style bicycle"; they spread nonsensical conspiracy theories about Corbyn being some kind of Czech Spy, Russian stooge, terrorism-loving, communist, Jew-hater; they ridiculed and grossly misrepresented virtually every policy position Corbyn ever took ("nationalise sausages"!); and they churned out endless hate-mongering rabble-rousing articles like "Labour Must Kill Vampire Jezza".

Just some of the political and media figures to switch
seamlessly from vilifying Corbyn to pretending they
oppose online hatred and abuse!

Then oh how they erupted in fits of laughter and frivolity when Corbyn was violently assaulted by that right-wing extremist; and how they chuckled and then instantly forgot about it when British soldiers used Corbyn's face as a target on a shooting range; and then they just ignored the multiple assaults on elderly Labour Party campaigners during the 2019 election (whilst uncritically amplifying outright Tory lies about Matt Hancock's aide supposedly being "punched" by a Corbyn-supporter).

To top it all off, they barely even bothered to object to the terrorist assassination plot against Corbyn and Sadiq Khan by the extreme-right Finsbury Park killer; or any of the numerous other examples of abuse and death threats against Corbyn and the Labour leadership team.

In fact their priorities were so utterly warped that they created vastly more faux outrage about a so-called "brick" through Angela Eagle's window in 2016, despite no evidence of who actually did it ever emerging, than coverage of an actual death threat made against Corbyn in the same week as brick-gate!

The political establishment and the commentariat class deliberately whipped up these firestorms of hatred because they detested normal democratic socialist policies like nationalised rail, energy, and water so much, and outright rejected the idea that the very-rich should just pay a bit more into the pot.

Then when their hate-mongering delivered the inevitable abusive, violent, and potentially deadly consequences, they simply turned their backs, refused to report it, belittled it, or even outright laughed at it.

Well now the very same people are all suddenly saying they want a 'kinder, gentler politics' in order to promote a right-wing authoritarian Tory crackdown on our Internet freedoms.

The gaslighting bastards!




NOTE: Of course these people and their supporters will resort to victim posturing, and pretending that proven facts about the vilification of Corbyn, and the conclusion "gaslighting bastards!" constitute the kind of horrifying abuse they're suddenly so concerned about. They didn't get where they were within the establishment order without knowing how to distort and manipulate everything to their advantage.

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The political establishment club need to get their own houses in order

The problems of online radicalisation abuse are incredibly serious, and something does need to be done about it because it's not only toxifying political discourse, it's creating a dangerous political environment where people who have been radicalised online have ended up committing despicable criminal acts, from the barrage of sexist and anti-Semitic online abuse aimed at the Labour MP Luciana Berger, to actual acts of terrorism like the Finsbury Park attack suspect who is a Britain First follower, and the Beckton acid attack suspect with a history of sharing extreme-right memes.

One of the big problems with countering this online abuse problem is that members of the political establishment often display breathtaking hypocrisy when they complain about the problem of online political abuse.

• Take Theresa May reading out a extreme-right misogynist's Tweet in the House of Commons to score cheap political points against Jeremy Corbyn. How can anyone ever take her seriously when she complains about online abuse when she's willing to engage in the very worst of it if it suits her purposes?

• Take the notorious brick-gate incident that is still being endlessly recycled to smear Jeremy Corbyn supporters as thugs and bullies, even though there isn't a shred of evidence that the brick was thrown by a "Corbynista", or that it was targeted at Angela Eagle's office rather than just being a random act of late night vandalism, or even that the damage was actually caused by a brick at all!

• Take the desperate efforts by people with right-wing views to pretend that the disgusting anti-Semitic abuse of Luciana Berger is coming from the left, when the online abusers who have been jailed for making threats against her are actually from the extreme-right (John Nimmo, Joshua Bonehill, Garron Helm).

• Take the constant barrages of abuse, lies and smears that constituted both the Tory London Mayor campaign in 2016 and Theresa May's vanity election in 2017. If people see members of the political class resorting to lies, smears and utterly disgraceful character attacks, then how can anyone be even remotely surprised when ordinary people imitate Lynton Crosby style shit-smearing tactics in the online environment?

• Take the fact that Yvette Cooper tweeted abuse from a known hard-right sockpuppet account that pretends to be a Jeremy Corbyn adviser in order to falsely misrepresent the left of the Labour Party as anti-Semites, which was either an incredibly foolish thing for her to do, or a sickiningly cynical stunt if done deliberately in knowledge of the account's true nature.

All of these incidents provide incontrovertible evidence that the political establishment are perfectly prepared to get down in the sewer and sling the most disgusting lies, misrepresentations, smears, abuse, and threats about if it suits their own political purposes, but then the very same people climb up onto their moral high horses and sneer at the general public for engaging in the same kind of sewer politics that they use.

The slightest bit of research by Theresa May or Yvette Cooper would have revealed the true nature of the disgusting Twitter accounts they were publicising in order to score incredibly cheap political points with; the continued reliance upon brick-gate conjecture as proof of Corbynista thuggery is a demonstration that the establishment club are perfectly happy to rely on exaggerations and smears when it suits them; it takes an epic amount of intellectual dishonesty for right-wingers to pretend that it's not their right-wing bedfellows who are guilty of the very worst acts of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic abuse and violence; and the last two Tory election campaigns were massive establishment endorsements of exactly the kind of filthy political shit-smearing that they decry when it's aimed back at them by members of the public.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending online abuse. As a high-profile leftie I'm a magnet for abuse, insults, absolute misrepresentations of my beliefs, threats and much worse from right-wingers. I'd be very satisfied if this kind of disgusting abuse could be made to go away by the waving of a magic wand, but it's just not that simple.

My point isn't that there's any excuse for online abuse (there isn't), it's that the political establishment club should get their own damned houses in order before they start lecturing the public.

Yvette Cooper may well enjoy high-horsing it over the horrible plebs, but when she's chosen to give a well-known right-wing sockpuppet smear account a huge publicity boost by awarding them exactly the kind of attention they crave, she's slithered down into the political sewer just like the people she's criticising. 

Except with her it's worse, because to complain about other people's online behaviour, then (wittingly or unwittingly) engage in the very worst kind of dishonest fake-account misrepresentation possible is so astoundingly hypocritical that it actually does serious damage to the perfectly reasonable stance that online political abuse is unacceptable and should be confronted.

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OR

The UK household savings rate just slumped to an all-time record low

The Tories have just set another significant economic record, ans it's not a good one. The UK savings rate has plunged to an all-time record low of just 1.7% of GDP.

The Tory track record

Despite the fact that the Tories have repeatedly set all kinds of terrible economic records over the last seven years of economic mismanagement, there are millions of people out there who believe they're doing a good job of managing the economy!

• Since 2010 the Tories have created more new debt than every Labour government in history combined.

• Between 2010 and 2017 the Tories oversaw the lowest level of house building since the early 1920s.

• Tory wage repression policies resulted in the worst collapse in the value of workers' wages since records began.

• Tory wage repression created a situation where the UK is the only economy in the developed world where the economy was growing while the share of the wealth going to workers was actually shrinking (meaning British workers are getting the worst deal in the world).

• Low levels of house building at a time of soaring demand combined with the ongoing Tory wage slump mean that UK house prices rose to their most unaffordable level ever in March 2017.

• Hard-right Tory austerity dogma resulted in the slowest post-crisis economic recovery since the early 18th Century.

• The Tories have broken the trade deficit record over and again since 2010.

• Since 2010 the UK economy has slumped into an appalling productivity crisis as the output of British workers has slumped dramatically in comparison to other major economies.

• Since the Brexit vote the Tories have overseen the worst collapse in disposable income since the 1970s.

• And now they've overseen a collapse to the lowest savings rate since records began.

Tory economic propaganda

The Tory economic narrative is astoundingly incoherent.

They argue that Britain is too poor to be able to afford decent public services or fair wages for the heroic grenfell tower fire fighters. but they also argue that they're doing such a fantastic job of managing the economy!

Just imagine the immunity to cognitive dissonance that is necessary for Tories to switch repeatedly between claiming that Britain is broke and Britain is booming, often in the same damned statement.

And just imagine the economic naivety of the people who actually believe both of these mutually contradictory Tory propaganda narratives.

Savings

I'm not sure that it should be necessary to explain why savings are important, or that an all-time record low in the savings rate is a sign of extreme economic weakness, but levels of economic education are obviously incredibly poor if millions of people are prepared to buy into the Tory propaganda narrative that Britain is both booming and broke at the same time, so I'll explain the importance of savings very briefly and simply.

Savings are important because they create economic flexibility and resilience. People with savings have the ability to invest in new innovative businesses, and they have the means to support themselves if they fall on hard times.

The lower the savings rate, the fewer opportunities people have to invest in the innovative businesses of the future, and the more reliant they are on the social security system if they encounter economic difficulties.

A collapsed savings rate is an indicator that huge numbers of people are struggling to get by so badly that they simply can't afford to set anything aside for future investments, or for a rainy day, and that millions more are struggling so badly that they're actively eating into their savings in order to keep their heads above water (they're having their rainy day right now).

Any sane analysis would present this savings rate collapse as an indicator of extreme economic sickness, but the mainstream media are already trying to cast the blame onto anything but the Tories and their toxic austerity dogma. Sky News is even trying to claim that the problem is caused by some kind of "reckless thirst for spending" amongst the British public.

They're presenting the problem as if seven years of catastrophic Tory economic mismanagement has nothing to do with it, and that some kind of radical, unprecedented and unexplained post-Brexit psychological shift has turned the British public into a bunch of hopelessly reckless spendthrifts within the space of a year!

Lack of accountability

Mainstream media outlets are far more likely to actually repeat the lunatic assumptions of "let's cut our way to growth" Tory austerity dogma as if they're unquestionable facts, than they are to point out how austerity dogma is a root cause of the litany of economic failure detailed above.

Mainstream media journalists are extraordinarily reluctant to point out the jarring disconnect between the mutually contradictory Tory propaganda narratives that Britain is both completely broke and absolutely booming.

Most mainstream media journalists are far more likely to blame the public, or the EU, or immigrants, or the opposition parties for the Tories' economic failings, rather than point out the role of fanatical Tory austerity dogma in retarding the UK economy.

The bulk of the mainstream media are unwilling to hold the Tories to account because an astonishing percentage of them went to the same elitist private schools, and the same exclusive universities as the Tories.

Just 7% of British people were educated at fee-paying private schools, but 51% of mainstream media journalists went to these exclusive schools, which is an even higher percentage than back in the 1980s.

The majority of mainstream media journalists don't give a damn that the Tories are screwing the economy and condemning millions to poverty because it doesn't directly affect them in their comfortable bubbles of privilege.

Their big houses in the country, flashy cars, expensive designer products and ostentatious luxury holidays depend heavily on them not rocking the boat. They're happy for the rest of us to suffer the burdens of austerity that they'll refuse to condemn it as the fanatical hard-right economic vandalism that it is.

They're actually happy to see other people suffer the deprivations of austerity, and see the UK get left behind in the global economic race due to chronic under-investment in infrastructure, innovation and services. 

They're happy to collude with this ruinous hard-right Tory agenda because they're actually doing alright out of it thanks very much.

Austerity and national economic decline are absolutely fine by them as long as it's other people who are forced to carry the cost of it.

Conclusion

Don't expect the Tories or their enablers in the mainstream media to suddenly begin telling you the truth about the economy, and the way that radical hard-right Tory austerity dogma has been wrecking it. 

It's just not going to happen.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

There would be no game of chess if the pawns refused to play

It's worrying how many people are so simple-minded that they actually swallow the right-wing propaganda that people like immigrants and the unemployed are to blame for societies woes, rather than the wealthy establishment class who are actually running the country.

There is clearly some psychology at play in people's willingness to accept the ridiculous right-wing propaganda that poor and powerless people at the bottom of the pile are to blame, rather than wealthy and powerful people at the top.

Many people prefer to kick downwards at people they perceive to be below them in the social pecking order because it makes them feel superior. By blaming powerless people at the bottom of society they can self-righteously crown themselves as a morally superior taxpayer who is being exploited by a disgusting contempt-worthy underclass.

The reality is that the vast majority of social and economic problems are created by an insulated and unaccountable establishment cabal who are far too busy serving their own interests (and the interests of the billionaire tax-dodging class who bankroll them) to give a damn about the impact of their policies on the lives of ordinary plebs. To accept this reality means that people have to admit to themselves that they're dupes; that they're essentially pawns in someone else's game of chess.

It's obviously a lot easier for people to adopt the self image of a morally superior taxpayer who is being exploited by a disgusting underclass than it is for them to accept the reality that they are actually part of an underclass that is being exploited and manipulated by a self-serving and seemingly untouchable establishment cabal above them.

In reality the furious right-wing indoctrinated blowhard who has been riled up into directing their anger at other pawns in the establishment game of chess has far more in common with the unemployed people, the sick and disabled and the immigrants that he has been programmed to hate than he does with the super-rich establishment class who don't give a damn about how their obsession with hard-right economic dogma and their self-serving behaviour impacts the lives of pawns like him. 

The whole modus operandi of the establishment class is to create divisions between the "lower orders" in order to keep the pawns fighting between themselves rather than joining together in solidarity to overthrow them and put an end to their game.

At a time when people should be rising up in solidarity against the rotten establishment, the reckless bankers, the corrupt politicians and the greedy corporate fat cats, the easily-led point the finger of blame at those they perceive to be below them on the social ladder - the unemployed, the underpaid, immigrants, sick and disabled people and the young.

It's only when the individual accepts their true position in society that they can begin rebelling against it. Once people realise that they are being treated like disposable pawns in someone else's game of chess that they can begin refusing to move in the direction the Westminster establishment club and their chums in the mainstream press demand that they do.

Those who allow themselves to be manipulated by the incessant propaganda that directs them to focus their anger on their fellow pawns are destined to forever continue living their lives as a powerless and easily manipulated underclass.

On the other hand, the people who accept the fact that they are being treated like pawns in an establishment game of chess at least have the capacity to rebel against the game, to refuse to play by the rules and to demand actual change.

Whether the rebellion against the establishment game can be successful depends on the number of people who are willing to accept the reality that they're being treated like disposable pawns and fight back against it. There would be no game of chess if the pawns refused to play.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Jeremy Corbyn vs Theresa May

It's amazing that Jeremy Corbyn is so often described as being "unelectable" and some kind of terrifyingly dangerous threat by members of the Westminster Establishment club (including many of his own MPs) and their chums in the mainstream media, while they simultaneously describe a fanatically authoritarian and brazenly incompetent woman like Theresa May as some kind of "safe pair of hands".

How on earth is a dangerously fanatical right-wing authoritarian who has harped on and on about her fantasy of scrapping our human rights and replacing them with a set of Tory allowances and churned out one incomprehensibly rubbish piece of legislation after another during her time as Home Secretary in any way a "safe pair of hands"?

How is a guy whose entire political platform is based on transferring more political power to ordinary people (instead of taking it away like Theresa May and her ilk want to) considered such a dangerous threat?

The answer is obvious.

The Westminster establishment aren't trying to define Jeremy Corbyn as a "threat" and Theresa May as a "safe pair of hands" because they care about your best interests. They don't give a shit about you. If that much isn't obvious enough by now then you're clearly the kind of person who is so gullible that they still, after six long years of it, believe in the economically incoherent "let's cut our way to growth" austerity con aren't you?

The Westminster establishment club and the mainstream media are intent on defining things in this backwards way because they're afraid of you. They're terrified that the people of the UK (who massively outnumber their tiny little establishment clique) have the huge latent power to overthrow the establishment order of things and reform the political system in a way that works better for ordinary people, and consequently less well for the likes of self-serving expenses-scamming career politicians, reckless bankers, corporate tax-dodgers, millionaire party donors and sociopathic right-wing press barons who benefit from the way things are now.

This establishment fear of the latent power of the masses has always existed. Back in 1920 the economic reformer C.H. Douglas described it when he said that "the attitude of statesmen and officials to the people in whose interests they are supposed to hold office, is one of scarcely veiled antagonism, only tempered by the fear of unpleasant consequences".  

The reason the establishment order are so damned insistent that the guy who wants to give more political power to you is some kind of terrible threat, and that the appalling woman who wants to strip you of your human rights is the safe and sensible option is that, like always, they're blatantly thinking about their own interests, not yours.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

How Labour dropped the ball on Scottish independence

Whoever devised the hardline Labour party stance on Scottish independence was clearly a strategic novice. In this article I'm going to explain why it was such a poor strategic error for Labour to openly side with the extremely unpopular Coalition government and the desperately endangered political species that is the Scottish Conservative Party. Then I will go on to explain what I think the Labour leadership could have done differently.

How Labour dropped the ball

The debate over greater autonomy for Scotland could have been a great opportunity for Labour to showcase their differences from the Tory party. Instead they have chosen to "dance with the devil" by openly siding with the Tory party in order to oppose greater autonomy for the Scottish people.

It's not like this is the first time that Ed Miliband has decided to openly collude with the Tories either. Back in March 2013 Miliband allowed Iain Duncan Smith to table a vile piece of retroactive legislation as "emergency legislation" so that it could be passed through parliament in a single day, and then ordered his MPs to abstain from the vote, in order to allow Iain Duncan Smith to retroactively cover up the fact that through his sheer incompetence he had unlawfully forced thousands of people onto unpaid labour schemes. In July 2014 Miliband and the Labour leadership sided with the Tories once again by ordering Labour MPs to vote in favour of a Tory bill to allow the security services to continue dredging the private communications data of millions of innocent people.

One of the clearest illustrations of the stupidity of choosing to sing from the Tory hymnsheet is the way that Labour have been forced to present two completely different narratives on the NHS either side of the border. Down in England the Labour Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham has warned that "NHS privatisation is being forced through at pace and scale" and called for a halt to NHS privatisations until the 2015 General Election. Meanwhile, north of the border Alistair Darling (who like all Scottish Labour MPs is a man who is fighting desperately for his job not to be abolished) has tried to ridicule people's concerns over NHS privatisation as "scaremongering". The hopelessness of Labour's mixed messages on the NHS are a direct consequence of their decision to side so closely with the Tory party.

The Labour decision to unify with the Tories and Lib-Dems in a battle against greater autonomy for Scotland has also strongly reinforced the the impression that there is essentially no difference between the three Westminster establishment parties. Whichever one you vote for, you'll get virtually the same policies. The only difference being the colour of the tie of the politician who is voting to sell off your public services on the cheap to their corporate mates, voting in favour of new draconian legislation to restrict the freedoms of the public in order to protect the interests of the establishment class, and all the while fiddling their expenses to make sure they make as much money as possible out of the Westminster gravy train.

The vision of Labour MPs like Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown sharing a political platform with the Tories is appalling enough for those of us who live in the rest of the UK, but to the people of Scotland it's much, much worse. The Tory party is widely despised in Scotland for many reasons, most notably the pilfering of Scottish oil revenues in order to hand out huge tax breaks to their wealthy backers in the City of London, Maggie Thatcher's Scottish Poll Tax experiment, the deliberate ideological attacks on Scottish workers and Scottish industry, the privatisation of so many Scottish services against the will of the Scottish public, and more recently the hated "Bedroom Tax". For Labour to ally themselves so closely with a toxic brand like the Tories like this is a huge mistake that the Scottish Labour party may never live down.

The fact is that should Scotland achieve independence, the SNP would lose their raison d'etre, but due to Labour's ridiculous hard line stance against greater autonomy for Scotland, surely nobody could consider them suitable rulers of an independent state that they have been so fervently opposed to?

So what should Labour have done differently?

The decision to share a political platform with the politically toxic Tory party was an extremely poor one for the reasons outlined above, but what could the Labour party have done differently?

In my view, the biggest mistake the Labour party made was the decision to continue backing the Tories, even after David Cameron ruled out a Devo Max option on the referendum.

Devo Max would have transferred more political powers to Scotland, but kept the Union in tact when it came to defence policy and foreign affairs. The evidence is absolutely clear that Devo Max would have been the preferred option of the Scottish electorate. When asked to choose between Devo Max and full independence, the Devo Max option won 61% to 39%. When asked to choose between Devo Max and continuation of the status quo, Devo Max won by 62% to 38%.

When David Cameron ruled out Devo Max in order to hold a gun to the heads of the Scottish electorate in a "with us or against us" binary choice, he ruled out the option that the overwhelming majority of Scottish people would have preferred.

The Labour stance should have been to continue arguing in favour of Devo Max, instead of siding so closely with the Tories. This would have allowed Labour to preface every single pronouncement on the independence issue with a strong attack on the Tory party for ruling out the option that the majority of Scottish people actually support.

The Labour message should have been "we want what the clear majority of Scottish people want, but David Cameron is forcing Scotland to choose between the two less popular options".

Adopting this stance would have given the Labour party the platform to talk up the achievements of the Scottish Parliament, and their own role in its creation. They could have spoken of how greater autonomy for Scotland has protected the Scottish NHS and the Scottish education system from the appalling mass privatisations of the English NHS and thousands of English schools. The narrative that devolution of power has been great for Scotland is one that would have resonated strongly with the Scottish electorate, and built the foundation of the argument for further devolution of political power.

If Labour wanted to show their support for the Union they could still have done so, but without sharing a political platform with the Tories. The Labour party could have made a commitment to offering the Scottish people the Devo Max referendum that they actually want the next time they come to power in Westminster, or in the Scottish parliament. This Devo Max stance would have established three important things.

1. It would have demonstrated to the Scottish people that Labour is "in tune" with what the majority of Scottish people actually want. 
2. It would have put clear distance between the Labour party and the Tory party.
3. It would have given the majority of Scottish people a strong reason to vote for the Labour party.

In deciding to side with the Tories, the Labour party has done a very large amount of damage to their reputation. In my view a much more sensible option would have been to steer well clear of the Tories and the "Better Together" fearmongering campaign, and to adopt a political stance that set them clearly apart from the Tories, and actually represented the will of the clear majority of the Scottish electorate.
  
Conclusion

I've tried to keep my strongly pro-independence views out of the above analysis in order to provide some reasonably balanced strategic analysis of Labour's woeful decision to jump into bed with the Tories, instead of carefully spelling out their own vision for the future of Scotland.

Had Devo Max been an option on the Scottish referendum ballot, I would have been forced to make a very difficult decision between supporting greater autonomy for Scotland or supporting full autonomy for Scotland. The fact that David Cameron decided to play a ridiculous "all-or-nothing" gamble with the constitutional future of Scotland by ruling out Devo Max has left me with a very easy decision indeed, to favour full autonomy for Scotland over the continuation of the unacceptable status quo.

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