by Rab Bruce’s Spider

This morning’s early revelation was that Labour’s John McDonnell has announced that his Party would not oppose a second referendum on Scottish independence.

My initial reaction was to wonder whether he had consulted Jeremy Corbyn on that, but he claimed this was also Corbyn’s view.

Needless to say, he has since backtracked considerably, later saying that they would argue against any request for a section 30 order on the grounds that a second IndyRef is not required. So Yes means No. Possibly. Or maybe not. With Labour, who knows?

Of course, Labour’s Scottish branch office are absolutely against IndyRef2. It is, for them, the one position they seem able to maintain without changing their minds or abstaining, no matter the cost to them in terms of lost votes.

Of course, the whole idea of a Labour / SNP pact to oust the Tories is barely credible. Jeremy Corbyn cannot get his Party ahead in the polls despite facing the most incompetent and out of touch Government any of us can remember. The Party’s pro-Brexit stance also means they have no chance of winning a General Election unless they are able to hoodwink the voters of England and Wales. Most Brexiteers will vote for Parties who are more outspoken in their support for Brexit.

But let’s suspend our disbelief for a moment and assume there is a General Election and Labour win enough seats to form a Government with the support of the SNP. Why on earth would they agree to IndyRef2 if they need that support? If the IndyRef produces the result the recent poll suggests, the SNP MPs would wave goodbye to Westminster, leaving Labour with insufficient seats to hold a majority. Outnumbered by Tories, Lib Dems and the Brexit Party, they’d be out of office before too long.

So what is in it for them? Perhaps they hope to lure some Scottish voters back by dangling this non-promise. If so, it’s a short-sighted ambition. It is in England where Labour need to win seats, and they show few signs of being capable of posing any sort of challenge to the increasingly right wing voters there. If they came out as unequivocally anti-Brexit they might have a chance of winning a majority of seats but, as ever, even if they did say they were anti-Brexit, could anyone believe them? Look at how short a time it took John McDonnell to change his stance on IndyRef2.