by Rab Bruce’s Spider

It was very interesting to hear the comments of Steven Purcell on Derek Bateman’s latest Podcast. Mr Purcell reported that, in his experience, there are many people who voted Yes in the IndieRef because they wanted a drastic change from the way Westminster government operated, but that these same people voted for Labour in the General Election because they saw Jeremy Corbyn as a viable alternative to Tory rule. This is an interesting concept because it implies that, should another IndieRef ever come along, these voters would be more likely to vote No if they thought there was a realistic chance that Jeremy Corbyn might soon become UK Prime Minister.

To be fair, the overriding principle such voters would be adhering to is the "pooling and sharing" of resources across the UK in a truly Socialist ideology, but this sort of reasoning has a serious logical flaw.

Let’s put aside Jeremy Corbyn’s support for Trident and Brexit, as well as his more worrying view that every country in the world should be independent except Scotland and Wales.

Let us indulge in some "What if?" speculation to see where votes for Corbyn could have led us had more Scots decided to vote for Labour in the General Election and that this had led to him becoming Prime Minister, even if that had required the support of the SNP and other Parties.

What would the UK have looked like if that had come about?

Probably not very much different to the way things are turning out now. Corbyn would proceed with Brexit, thus removing Scotland from the EU against the wishes of the majority of Scottish voters. Austerity would remain largely the dominant economic strategy since, despite having the estimable Richard Murphy as one of his advisors, Jeremy Corbyn seems incapable of understanding how national economies operate, leading to his manifesto pledged to retain the vast bulk of the existing Tory Austerity measures. To be fair to him, most MPs share his inability to perceive the flaws in Austerity, but that isn’t really much of an excuse.

So we’d have Brexit, we’d have Austerity, and we’d soon have Trident being renewed. We’d have Scotland stuck to the UK because Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t believe in national self-determination for Scotland. Perhaps those who decided to vote for him believed these are prices worth paying to have the railways re-nationalised, to regain free University tuition in England and Wales, and to maybe have existing student debts written off. Or maybe not.

Quite frankly, it is difficult to see the appeal of these measures from a Scottish perspective, but voters cast their votes for a variety of reasons, so maybe some people would indeed have thought it was worth sticking with Corbyn because he might just improve the lot of the poorest citizens in our society instead of victimising them the way the Tories do.

OK, fair enough so far, but let’s take the assumptions a stage further. Let’s assume that Jeremy Corbyn had become Prime Minister and had undergone an epiphany as regards Austerity economics. Let’s assume that he dismantled the Austerity programme, reversed the privatisation of the NHS in England, changed his mind on Brexit and generally improved things for the majority of UK citizens.

Hooray! Surely that would be worth it? Why on earth would Scotland want to break free from a more egalitarian UK which adopted a truly internationalist viewpoint, stopped making war on Middle Eastern countries who can’t fight back, entered into a spirit of cooperation with its EU counterparts and generally became a much more pleasant and welcoming place to live?

There is one very obvious answer to that which those who espouse Corbyn’s case in Scotland do not appear to appreciate. It is that there would be another General Election in a few years’ time, and more after that at five-yearly intervals. Jeremy Corbyn will retire sooner or later. Would his successor continue to pursue the socialist policies Corbyn’s supporters applaud? Even if he or she did, what guarantee is there that a socialist Labour Party would be re-elected? The voters in England have a distressing tendency to vote Conservative more often than not. If Theresa May and the Brexiteers who currently run the UK had been swept away by a new generation of Tory leaders, might not the voters of England decide to give them a chance?

What would happen then? Scotland, having lost its chance of escaping, would again be condemned to Tory rule.

Jeremy Corbyn might be seen by some as the solution to the Westminster problem. In reality, he is part of the Westminster problem, but even if he wasn’t, he could only ever be a short-term solution to a long-term problem. The truth is that the only way Scotland will ever be able to make its own decisions is to become a normal country. Any vote which goes to a Unionist Party, for whatever reason, only undermines the case for independence.