How typical of Nu-Labour to focus-group the surface and leave the substance rotten and thoroughly England-controlled
Scottish Labour’s notional leader Anas Sarwar has decided to remove the red rose from the Scottish party logo and replace it with a red thistle, after focus groups – the Blairites’ bible – said the rose didn’t play well.
A party source – it’s notable that it was not described as a Scottish party source – told the Herald that ‘This is a big step in the right direction for Scottish Labour’ and ‘this is just one part of a wider culture change that is about building a political party for a modern Scotland’.
How typical of the Blairite mentality that changing a logo, the most superficial of all possible changes, is considered a ‘big step’.
But even more relevantly – and more ‘Blairitely’ – the change is masking a rotten reality. Because in Nu-Labour terms, a ‘political party for a modern Scotland’ is one that’s in the pocket of the Westminster Labour right.
Scottish Labour is supposedly a separate unit with its own autonomy in Labour structures, but last year Keir Starmer ‘intervened’ to remove Scottish party leader Richard Leonard because he wanted to please some millionaires he hoped might give some money to the party with Leonard gone.
Not satisfied with that, the English leadership also forced the Scottish party’s general secretary to resign, so he could be replaced with someone Starmer liked better. The manoeuvre failed – the donors didn’t materialise and Labour is near bankruptcy – but it spoke volumes about the contempt of the English Labour right for Scotland and Scottish Labour.
Replacing the red rose with a red thistle is a surface gesture of the kind so loved of the Labour right because it avoids having to actually change the status quo – but in reality it is a massive insult to the Scottish people, because it reveals that Starmer and co think they’re daft and gullible enough to fall for such superficiality.
But the control-freakery of the Labour right means that Scottish Labour is still considered a vassal to the English leadership and a new logo is nowhere near enough to hide that reality, let alone change it or make the current Labour regime any kind of ‘political party for a modern Scotland’.
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Thistle or rose, it doesn’t matter Labour is not longer a political force in Scotland.
Mock all you like but Anas Sarwar must be doing something right. In the last year of Leonards’s ‘leadership’ Scottish Labour managed to fundraise a derisory £250, under Anas Sarwar’s leadership their fundraising efforts and popularity have been reinvigorated and they have raised £1,000,000 in the last 12mths, a 4,000 fold increase.
The link?
goldbach – Happy to oblige, I’m surprised that you didn’t know this already.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19964763.donations-scottish-labour-hit-1-million-anas-sarwar-leadership/
Donations to Scottish Labour hit £1 million under Anas Sarwar leadership
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar was forced to implement an emergency financial plan when he replaced Richard Leonard in February last year.
SCOTTISH Labour has raised £1 million in donations in the year since Anas Sarwar became leader, amid signs the party is gaining lost ground after years in the political doldrums,
The sum is a massive increase, with just £250 donated when Richard Leonard was at the helm in 2019, while under Kezia Dugdale in 2016, the figure was £26,839.
A meaningless point in the absence of any solid factual information as to the sources of that funding?
Is it from ordinary members of the public?
Is it from corporate sponsors?
Is in from a mixture of both and if so in what proportions.?
Dave – I don’t know, why don’t you do some research and find out for yourself.
Perhaps this is the reason:
Sarwar told LabourList in an interview during the election that he wanted “to keep the radicalism of the previous leadership”
“Sarwar told LabourList in an interview during the election that he wanted “to keep the radicalism of the previous leadership”
Well, the ’10 Pledges’ Lie worked so well for Klaus Schwab’s close friend, Sir Keir Rodney Starmer.
Mmmm. Not a particularly satisfying “article”. Just a few lines.
If it’s correct, then there is a distinct dichotomy between Scotland and England. To raise money at that rate, the central LP would have had to raise around £11-12M in the year. So they wouldn’t be skint. Are conditions so different in Scotland or is something being spun?
goldbach – The facts I posted are confirmed in the article I posted, if you want to know any further details then please feel free to do your own research and come back and tell us all about it.
Why have a dog and bark yourself, steveH?
Besides, you brought it up. If you can only be arsed to do half a job don’t expect others to finish your job for you. Get off your idle backside and do a proper job rather than a bodge job.
You cannot get the bleedin’ staff can you.
Dave – Please give your silly childish nonsense a rest. If you want to know more then search it out for yourself. I’ve got better things to do than pander to you.
Simply asked a question thinking that you might know the answer. Clearly not.
goldbach – I made that quite clear over 5hrs ago
https://skwawkbox.org/2022/03/11/sarwar-rebrands-scottish-labour-but-westminster-still-pulls-the-strings/#comment-217889
Why thank you steveH. It is always most gratifying to receive recognition from the acknowledged expert in a particular field.
I’ll take that response as “I, steveH, have not got a bleedin’ clue whether this sum of money is £1 each from a million enthusiastic voters or several corporate donors investing in some paid for politicians they want to get favours from in the future and I’m just parroting some bullshit official narrative as though it has some real world meaning.”
If you cannot back up your claims with convincing evidence steveH you just end up undermining your own argument. Convincing no one.
You really do need to up your game mate.
Dave – I haven’t made any claims, you are the one doing that. Unless you have some evidence that the statement made by Anas Sarwar is a lie then I am struggling to see the point you are trying to make.
Jesus wept!
Its not quantum mechanics:
Here is what you wrote:
” under Anas Sarwar’s leadership their fundraising efforts and popularity have been reinvigorated and they have raised £1,000,000 in the last 12mths, a 4,000 fold increase.”
Just who are they popular with as a result of this 4000% increase in funding over the past twelve months steveH? You have explicitly linked the increase in funding to an increase in the popularity of the LP in Scotland.
Logically, this can only be the case if they have raised this sum from tens of thousands of LP supporters in Scotland.
However, there is no evidence presented to support this.
In the absence of that evidence it is equally feasible that the increase in funding is as a result of a far smaller number of corporate and similar donors hedging their bets for future influence with politicians. They do it all the time in many different ways.
For example, the APPG on Unconventional oil and gas (fracking) received some 334k entirely from corporate sources between 2014-17. The payback from that corporate ‘investment’ in the form of direct and indirect tax subsidies and grants etc was in the £ tens of billions.
In which case there would be no such link between that increase in funding and the increase in popularity which you have claimed exists.
Would you like me to write some Janet and John books for you in my spare time?
Dave – Oh please do 😏
SteveH, That’s nice. All together, PUSH!
Do you recall how pathetically badly Scottish Labour did in the 2021 Holyrood elections, when they were reduced to 22 seats and 21.6% of the vote, in a country they SHOULD be able to count on winning by landslide margins, as they always did from 1964 through 2010? Were you aware that every poll taken between the ’21 election and now has shown SLAB sliding up and down between 17% and 22%
Are you also aware that none of that matters to Keir, that, to him, the ONLY thing that matters is that SLAB not be seen as socialist or in any way left-of-centre at all?
Maybe Anwar should rebrand Scottish labour into “sweat shop labour” after his and his family’s sweat shop factorys.This man is the face of “unacceptable capitalism and neo liberal labour party ideology.
It would only go over your head as it is just not possible to educate pork.
I can bet you that there will be no Labour seats left in Scotland in the next election.
Recent MRP polls indicate that in the next GE the Conservatives will be the party that lose all their seats in both Scotland and Wales
New Labour’s 1994 take-over of the Labour Party directly led to Scotland’s near-total rejection of Labour. How appropriate that Sarwar, a ‘centrist’ new labour acolyte, fails to see this and, instead, prescribes more of the same.
The word ‘incorrigible’ comes to mind.
Let’s face it, Sarwar is, just, another ‘grace and favour’ Labour MSP. A List MSP.
Until Labour, in Scotland, embrace the idea of Scottish Independence, they’re going nowhere. That’s the main thing Scots are interested in, these days.
They don’t, even, seem to understand that – now – is the time they should be planning for post-Independence.
It’s not Scots Independence that Labour needs to embrace- there are already several parties in Scotland pushing that- it is socialism. That is what can be campaigned on in Scotland, it has deep roots, its most famous exponents were for independence, and it is the substance of what the SNP clearly doesn’t offer. Not just a change of symbols and office holders but genuine social and economic change.
As for red thistles, that just about sums up New Labour.
And that million pounds? My guess is that between the family business and the NED and other Trilateral Commission/CIA fronts it is small change. What they cannot supply is boots on the ground-neighbours explaining why socialism works door to door.
bevin – “socialism works”, can you give us some examples?
SteveH
11/03/2022 at 6:34 pm Welsh Labour Socialism is working very well, out of the malign gaze of Southside Labour. The only part of UK Labour that is working, as it should.
Maximum number of seats permitted under the Devolution Rules.
A respected Leader, working hard for the people that elected him, with an increase to his personal majority of 10,000.
How does that compare to the leader of UK Labour, and the leader of Scottish Labour?
Good. The more Labour disassociates itself from the original brand and the perception that a lot of people still have of it as the party that stands for working people – the better.
GOOD. The more Labour disassociates itself from the original brand and the perception of it that a lot of people still have – that its the party that stands for working people – all the better
Covid has disappeared from the discourse, so I’ll have one last parting shot at it.
Earlier this month I got Omicron, so that makes it a full house. Might as well not do things by half.
Nationalism, that last refuge of scoundrels. has such an ugly face, whether it’s Scottish or English. Pictures of Sir Keir (something of the knight…….) draping himself in the Union Jack fills me with fear; Nationalism has always led to war. & the drums are beating.
Here’s a British politician actually talking some sense about the war in Ukraine.
Jeremy 100% right as always.
…..and then Putin invaded Ukraine and is currently killing thousands of civilians
Russia-Ukraine war: Jeremy Corbyn was right all along about Putin and his oligarchs
By Peter Oborne
Corbyn sides with Russia (again), announces the Spectator. Meanwhile, the BBC announces that Starmer has slapped down Corbyn for criticising Nato.
In this column, I will defend the former Labour leader against these latest attacks.
There are three good reasons for coming to the rescue of this failed politician whose time as a major player in British politics is over.
The first is a simple matter of putting the record straight. Corbyn’s leadership of Labour was defined by one slur and lie against him after another. The lies have started again and simple decency suggests they should be rebutted.
The second is that the Tory Party and Labour establishment have their reasons for taking aim at Corbyn. He gives them an alibi. For the Tories and the Labour establishment, mocking Corbyn distracts from their own long-lived collaboration with Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs…
The truth is that no modern politician has been more consistent or more prescient when it comes to Putin than Corbyn. Far from being pro-Putin, Corbyn warned against him when others didn’t.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-jeremy-corbyn-right-putin-oligarchs
Precisely stevieh lad! We (well Sir Keir Rodney Sillyman.) should have listened to him on the Salisbury poisoning and properly sanctioned the corrupt elite (Rusian oligarchs) who deny our Russian brothers and sisters their day in the wonderful democratic-socialist sun.
Socialism and Democracy are Indivisible. Each one alone is the other’s enabler. Keir Starmer and the WEF are barriers to both.
Indeed. If the buffoons running the US, UK etc. had taken heed and followed the track Mr Corbyn suggested, then we wouldn’t be where we are now, would we?
A fact we are all aware of, SteveH- and an occurrence that NONE of the truculence of Boris or Keir oppressive, antidemocratic nastiness towards voices of conscience in the PLP did anything whatsoever to prevent. Corbyn was calling for the removal of Russian oligarchs from the British economy and the funding of UK political parties years ago, and had been denouncing Putin as a tyrant from the start. The Left is blameless in this and the right and “centre” have nothing at all to show for their approach to this situation.
Question Time earlier this week was an absolute travesty:
5 people with virtually identical views.
Stephen Kinnock’s wife said that ‘NATO got involved with Afghanistan and Libya’.
Well, that’s one way of putting it. Presumably, the Yorkshire Ripper ‘got involved with a number of women’.
SteveH 11/03/2022 at 2:33 pm :
Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t the only one warning about NATO expansion. He’s in illustrious company. Here are, just, a few of them : https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498491107902062592.html
When was that programme on? I missed it.
Upon which subject, following Victoria ‘f*** the EU’ Nuland’s admission under testimony the other day which totally blew the lid off the worldwide archipelago of US bio weapon facilities, here’s just some of the gory details, complete with screenshots of the official documents and other substantiating links, from research conducted almost four years ago by the independent journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva:
https://dilyana.bg/the-pentagon-bio-weapons/
“The US Army regularly produces deadly viruses, bacteria and toxins in direct violation of the UN Convention on the prohibition of Biological Weapons. Hundreds of thousands of unwitting people are systematically exposed to dangerous pathogens and other incurable diseases. Bio warfare scientists using diplomatic cover test man-made viruses at Pentagon bio laboratories in 25 countries across the world. These US bio-laboratories are funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under a $ 2.1 billion military program– Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP), and are located in former Soviet Union countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa.”
This bit is particularly interesting:
“Ethnic biological weapon (biogenetic weapon) is a theoretical weapon that aims to primarily harm people of specific ethnicities, or genotypes.
Although officially the research and development of ethnic bio-weapons have never been publicly confirmed, documents show that the US collects biological material from certain ethnic groups – Russians and Chinese.
The US Air Force has been specifically collecting Russian RNA and synovial tissue samples, raising fears in Moscow of a covert US ethnic bio-weapons program.”
Given that the Ukrainian military has been shelling and murdering ethnic Russians in the East of the Ukraine for eight years and were massing the bulk of its forces on the Donbass contact line in preparation for a military assault in which far right neo-nazi groups incorporated into both the military and political structures were intent on exterminating those they consider untermenschen its perhaps just as well they were prevented from committing any further war crimes.
Still, they don’t count as far as the steveh’s of this world are concerned.
Addendum:
Here’s a recent video interview with Dilyana Gaytandzhieva:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8VIp1tbzWw
In the light of this its probably prudent for readers to invest a little money in an ancestry DNA test to make sure they have no Slav or Chinese DNA, no matter how residual. You can’t be too sure with these arrogant knob heads.
Having undergone regular NBC training during army service, along with a stint as a test subject at Porton Down, I can attest to how serious this shit is.
There are a lot of people involved here who should be dragged out of their safe bolt holes to a War Crimes trial – whatever it takes to achieve that.
And here is the video of the UNSC meeting yesterday:
https://media.un.org/en/asset/k16/k16nsx50dm
“US representatives get rather confused when speaking about the US involvement in biological activity on the territory of Ukraine. During hearings of the US Congress on 8 March, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland in fact confirmed that there were biolabs in Ukraine where military-purpose biological research had been conducted. When asked by Senator Marco Rubio whether Ukraine had biological and chemical weapons, she responded that Ukraine had biological research facilities that “should not fall in the hands of Russian forces”.
At the same time, the Department of State sticks to the point that allegedly there are no US-controlled biolabs in Ukraine. Hence a question to the American delegation.
“How does this reconcile with 2005 Agreement between the US Department of Defense and Ukrainian Ministry of Health Concerning Cooperation in the Area of Prevention of Proliferation of Technology, Pathogens, and Expertise that could be Used in the Development of Biological Weapons?”
This document is available on the Internet.
According to Article 3 of this agreement, the US Department of Defense may provide assistance to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine in the area of “cooperative biological research, biological threat agent detection and response” with regard to “dangerous pathogens located at the facilities in Ukraine”.
We emphasize that biological threats defy all borders. No region of the world can feel totally safe today. The United States supervises several hundreds of biolabs in 30 countries, i.a. in the Middle East, Africa, South-East Asia, and along the perimeter of former USSR. Washington does not agree to subject them to international verification.”
No amount of bullshit bluster and ten minute hate sessions is going to make this go away.
Thank you for taking the trouble to post these two videos Dave Hansell. The interview with Dilyana G.. is especially thought provoking causing me to look again at, for example: Nuland’s careful use of the euphemism “research” and failure to explicitly deny a bio weapons programme when under oath; the ease with which the development of typical bio weapons materials can be brushed aside as an aspect of such “research”; the way in which the rather lame, official narrative on these labs seems chiefly to lean on the notion that the “sponsoring”, for which read the building and funding of these labs by the USA, is simply an act of friendly altruism on their part. I wonder if there’s any geo-political pattern to be found in the location of these 365 or so bio security labs around the globe.
Does the leadership really think the Scots will be impressed by a red thistle. So impressed they won’t bother looking at policies, just look at a thistle.
It’s much like Starmer and his advisers decided that using the Union Jack in England will attract those who normally vote Tory.
If my memory serves me right it was Neil Kinnock that introduced the red rose symbol.
Should have been the red nose symbol.
Was it? Thanks. I’m unsure of the exact reason for adopting the Red Rose as symbolism for socialism but I know it’s been used by Socialist and Socialist Democratic parties. Doesn’t say much for his appreciation of English (and its royalists ) history. The red rose symbol caused many-a Yorkshire person exrteme discomfort in the early days.
The Red Star’s my favourite symbol, or the plain Red Flag of the Paris Commune.
qwertboi – Why would we use a symbol that doesn’t represent what the Labour Party stands for
The meaning is in the ‘Red’ bit SteveH, but ‘red rose’ is associated with the Wars of the Roses a oligarchic series of bloody civil wars for the throne of England between two competing ‘royal’ power bases the House of York gang and the House of Lancaster gang.
Point is, though, the Red Rose is a sectarian badge of power struggle. DOH – peny suddenly dropped – I can see why te current ‘by-appointment-to-Klaus Schwab-and-the-Billionaires’ W E F’, Keir Rodney Starmer likes it.
He’s a text-book example of the obsequiousness that always preceeds Fascism and enables Totalitarianism. Keir Rodney “show me your papers” Starmer – on the wrong side of History and no friend to democatic socialism.
qwertboi – The same red flag that I have just seen on the TV, flying from the gun turret of a Russian tank on its way to murder more civilians.
ps – Thanks for the O-Level history lesson.
THe problem for the LP is that there can be no symbol which represents what the LP stands for, when it stands for precious little of any merit. So we are left with a daft “rebranding”.
goldbach – This ‘news’ about the new logo is a week old so I’m baffled why you are getting your knickers in a twist about it now.. Perhaps if you read more widely you would be able to keep up.
Calm down, young man. Skwawkbox only published this report today.
goldbach – As I said above, “Perhaps if you read more widely you would be able to keep up.”.
For me such things are of peripheral interest. I do not trawl the MSM for relatively minor reports day in day out. Sarwar is a nothing and the report on this website would only have elicited a passing interest had it not been for your ungenerous input. I can understand that you are inclined to spend most of your time on such things. That’s fine, but I have family, read fiction and history, take an armchair interest in football and cricket and, when health permits, like to garden. I do not trawl the MSM for relatively minor reports day in day out. It’s good for the soul. I can recommend it.
goldbach – Of peripheral interest? Really, your numerous comments indicate otherwise.
It started as the Socialist International rose- which it should have been kept at, because THAT symbol is heroic and represents the courage of the democratic Left in standing against greed, inequality and all forms of tyranny. After singlehandedly blowing the ’87 GE, Kinnock went on a vindictive antisocialist rampage, punishing the Left for HIS failings and his own perpetual unpopularity, and replacing the SI rose with something that looks like part of the decor of the sort of snobby, cliquish upscale wine bar Keir and the Keirmacht frequent whenever they’re not pretending to like a pint.
You are shameless., happily exploiting which ever current narrative the estabisment (and its synchronised-MSM) is using to promote their satanic new world order. And btw sevieh, the Russian Federation is not a socialist enterprise. Even its predecessor, the USSR, was neither socialist nor aspiring to democracy since sometime around the mid 1920’s when Sir Keir’s namesake, Joseph Stalin, corrupted Soviet socialism the way he corrupted Labour’s corbynite revival.
kenburch: “The Keirmacht”
Love it! I shall use your new word as a mass noun to mean: “A measure of the authoritarianism or (g”d-forbid!) fascism facilitated by a leader of the Labour party”.
Sir Keir Rodney obviously sets the standard, scoring a 10 (10/10).
Now we have a party measurement that manages to differentiate between regular, run-of-the-mill, regrettable bourgeois thinking and industrial-strength, ‘forensic’ anti-democracy and anti-socialism of the type prescribed by ‘third-way’ (i.e. pretend socialists) centrist neolberals (typically followers of WEF billionaire-centred oligarchy). Thanks.