The only way to develop and build a party of a new type that in any way threatens capitalism is at the same time to develop and build the mass movement around it, argues BILL GREENSHIELDS

IT IS a difficult time for the left in the Labour Party, in Scotland as everywhere else. There is no need, for the readers of this paper, to list the examples of back sliding mendacity from Keir Starmer and acolytes, nor the Labour leadership’s collusion in distorting or abandoning democratic practice in order to ensure absolute loyalty to our dear leader from prospective parliamentary candidates. Scotland has not been exempted from this.
We can neither ignore it, nor adopt the approach of the ultra-left which seems to have come straight out of Blackadder Goes Forth — a mad assault on enemy positions over open ground in the certainty of mass slaughter.
Perhaps those advocating such an approach do so on the assumption that a new workers’ party is about to bring salvation to abandoned socialists, so that expelled Campaign Group members could represent “a real socialist party” for a year before losing their seats in the 2024 election.

VINCE MILLS says Scottish Labour has adopted better positions than its Westminster counterpart — but unless it starts to fight for them that will count for nothing

VINCE MILLS cautions over the perils and pitfalls of ‘a new left party’

VINCE MILLS says politicians of various parties are interpreting the result in self-serving ways, but it contains little comfort for the left

VINCE MILLS gathers some sobering facts that would inevitably be major obstacles to any such initiative