DISCUSSIONS in Glasgow this weekend on the way forward for the left in Scotland in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union are heartening.

We cannot afford to lose time restaging the arguments over the EU if we are to stand any chance of influencing the course of events.

To do so would be to give a free pass to those in Westminster and Holyrood who are determined to ensure the best result for capital and the privileged classes. They have their ultimate goal in sight and the only chance that the working class has of fending off their assaults is by keeping our objective clear too.

That is why Radical Options for Scotland and Europe is such a positive development, with chair Eddie McGuire urging all leftwingers no matter their position on the EU to unite around our common aims.

The threat is very serious. The Conservative government never lets a good crisis go to waste and you can be sure that whichever way individuals voted in June, they are now united in planning to use the exit negotiations to punish working people while ensuring the EU’s pro-corporate framework continues to dictate how our economy is run.

The result of Brexit will ultimately be what we make of it. Internecine spats on the left provide the room for manoeuvre for class warriors on the right determined to further hack away at the conditions of the working class in Britain.

Instead, as activists did in Scotland, our focus should be on charting out a clear course such that we can bring pressure on the Conservatives at every turn, facing down their attacks no matter the concocted pretext and pressing a radical alternative.

True solidarity is found in our class and there must be no distraction.

That holds across borders too, as Jeremy Corbyn said clearly at the Party of European Socialists meeting in Prague. The wave of neoliberal economic wrecking has crashed across Europe, in many cases washing away the social democrats who colluded with capitalism and watched as bosses ate up yet more of the fruits of our labour while many millions struggled to put food on the table.

In the recent period we have seen various hatemongers vie to fill the void left by supposedly left-wing “apologists for a broken system.” The neonazi contesting the Austrian presidential elections and the likelihood of a contest in France between the right and far right — in no small part due to the way Francois Hollande reneged on promises to halt austerity, dashing the hopes of millions — are just the latest manifestations of a parasitical populist right.

Corbyn correctly identified the reason: “Often the populist right do identify the right problems but their solutions are the toxic dead ends of the past, [using] rhetoric designed to divide and blame.”

As in the 20th century, it is up to the left to counter this nascent fascist resurgence. Only socialists have the analysis needed to identify the problems faced and the solutions required; no amount of liberal hand-wringing will do.

Corbyn again: “The reason we are losing ground to the right today is because the message of what socialism is and what it can achieve in people’s daily lives has been steadily diluted.”

We must concentrate that message and stand “for real change, and a break with the failed elite politics and economics of the past.” We must show how through solidarity we can transform society to work for all, give people hope instead of hate and cut the ground from under would-be goose-stepping goons.