My Third Election blog. For Labour, Winter is coming

It says everything that today's Panelbase poll giving Scottish Labour a mere 20% was nonetheless greeted with some sense of relief in my Party's ranks. The week before last there were three Council by-elections in Scotland: two in Fife and one in Inverness. The Labour vote fell by 4.3%,  6.9% and, in the only seat where we had much of a vote share to start with, a spectacular 13.%. In the last case, Dunfermline Central, we also managed to go from second place to fourth in one fell swoop.

It is looking increasingly likely Labour will lose every seat we currently hold north of the border excepting the wholly unrepresentative example of the "Labour and Unionist" candidate Ian Murray in Edinburgh South.

This would remain a tragic outcome to me, semi detached though I am from Corbyn's Labour. Not least as several outstanding public representatives will be swept away in the process, never mind that many others who would make outstanding public representatives will never get that opportunity.

It would be fair to say however that Corbyn and his allies wrote off Scotland from the start. Their pivot to supporting or at least allowing a second independence referendum had nothing to do with attracting Labour votes in Scotland but everything to do with attracting SNP votes in a hoped for hung Parliament in the post election period.The Scottish Labour Party was not even as much as consulted in the process and I doubt if this policy shift will feature on a single Labour leaflet north (or indeed south) of the Border.

But it will all, anyway, be in vain, except for leaving us with an immense hangover for the 2021 Holyrood election, as it seems increasingly clear from the UK polls that on 12th December, we are heading for at least a Tory majority and in all probability a Tory landslide.

There will then be an existential choice for the Labour Party. The manifesto consists of little more than a whole list of retail policies aimed, not, in my opinion, even very cleverly, at specific target groups of voters, together with a gigantic wish list of public sector and want to be public sector Trade Union demands. Today's £58Bn overnight "promise" to women in their sixties without even the pretence of knowing how it would be funded is but the most ludicrous example of the former to date, while the straightforward manifesto offer of an immediate pay increase to a select group of workers, whose unions are bankrolling Labour's campaign, borders on the farcical. And don't even get me started on "sectoral collective bargaining".

But there is no doubt the manifesto was greeted with something approaching hysteria in Corbynista circles. It is in truth worthless. Mere words on a piece of paper much of which the leadership circle know themselves has no prospect of being implemented, given that the limit of their electoral ambition is to be the largest Party in a hung Parliament. Anybody think the SNP would ever sign up for the entire country's broadband being within the monopoly hands of the British Government? Or the Libs for pretty much any of this, even if Corbyn himself was sacrificed in pursuit of their support? No, me neither.

But the question is what happens next. For some, a "brilliant" manifesto every five years and four years and ten months of meetings, rallies and protests in between will be an end in itself. "Hobby politics" as someone once described it. The cult of Jeremy will become the cult of Rebecca, or whoever, but otherwise things pretty much carry on as before. Hopefully., at least, with a bit less anti-Semitism.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if that happens. The same Trade Unions most signed up for Corbyn have been content with that pattern of events for their own internal affairs. Declining memberships and declining real world influence or even relevance but still brilliant banners to wave on the occasional, not very well attended, demonstration.

If it does, Labour's only continued function will be to entrench the Tories in permanent power in a way that the Italy's PCI did for nearly fifty years post war for the Italian Christian Democrats. The PCI had even better banners, and bigger, more colourful marches, in the process. They could also call on much better film directors than Ken Loach to document their struggle. A lot of good it did them. Real change only came when the DC destroyed themselves with the corruption absolute power always brings in the end. Even then, continued factionalism between the left and centre simply paved the way for Berlusconi and now, one fears, Salvini.

Well done Jeremy. If you can secure the succession for an acolyte, you will leave a lasting legacy. Where that leaves the rest of us will be the subject of my next blog. I suspect it won't be happy reading either.