And So Labour Pushes Itself Ever Deeper into Irrelevance

Welfare vote will 'haunt' Labour says SNP

The SNP has said Scottish Labour will pay a heavy price for not voting in greater numbers against planned welfare cuts by the UK government.

The prediction comes after plans to cut £12bn pounds from the welfare budget passed their first hurdle in the Commons on Monday night.

Forty-eight Labour's 232 MPs voted against the package.

SNP MP Hannah Bardell said Labour's position was a ''shambles'' which would "haunt" them at the Holyrood election.

The Commons backed the Welfare Reform and Work Bill by 308 to 124 votes.

The SNP voted firmly against the UK government's controversial proposals in the Welfare Reform Bill.

There were 48 Labour rebels but most, including Scotland's sole Labour MP Ian Murray, abstained on the orders of acting leader Harriet Harman.

Labour leadership hopeful Andy Burnham said his party made "a mess" of its approach and was "crying out for leadership".

He said he had agreed to abstain on the key vote because he was "not prepared to split the party".

...

"Labour have completely abandoned any pretence of being a party of social justice and progress - just as they did when they so shamefully voted to support George Osborne's £30bn more austerity cuts."

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she was "sadly not" surprised by the party's decision to abstain.

The SNP leader added: "Labour seem to have lost any sense of purpose or any sense of direction."

"It really does beg a fundamental question, if Labour is not about opposing a Tory government that is waging an ideological assault not on skivers who don't want to work, but on people who are working hard on low incomes, if Labour is not about opposing that, what is Labour for?

"Last night just proves that Labour has lost any sense of purpose and it will be the SNP who increasingly will form the real opposition in the House of Commons."

The SNP really aren't doing themselves any favours in terms of public support or sympathy south of the border, when they partake in childish stunts like this, but they do have something of a point about being the 'real opposition' when the Labour party continually stakes its flag just slightly to the left of wherever the Tories are at any given point in time, and when they keep declining opportunities to actually oppose the Conservatives, begging time and again, what the hell are they for ?  There are other actual leftist parties in the UK, and the Lib Dems can claim to be the party of civil liberties, but Labour ?

Short of a personality to dominate the party, someone with the magician-like qualities to successfully convince the public that they are a centre-left party whilst pushing time-and-again centre-right (at best) policies, there is no future in 'New Labour.'  'New Labour' was Tony Blair, and worked solely because of Tony Blair.  There may or may not be much of a future in a principled 'Old Labour', but 'New Labour' is done, and it is the likes of Harman, Cooper, and Kendall that are clinging to the past, not the new intake of MP's who voted their conscience.

Which leaves us with 'friend of Hamas' Corbyn (who did vote against) and Brave Sir Andy, who really really wanted to oppose the Conservatives, but didn't want 'to split the party and make the job of opposition even harder' and so boldly abstained from voting Aye or No.

He added: "It was a mess, wasn't it? The run-up to this vote was a bit of a mess. It is quite clear that this is a party now that is crying out for leadership and that is what I have shown in recent days."

Um, yes it was.  Yes it does.  And no, you haven't.  Actually, I suspect that this could have been a crucial breakout moment for Burnham had he taken the lead on strongly opposing the Conservatives' plans.  As is, voters in the leadership-contest for Labour, have their Blairite candidates already, have their Old Labour candidate, and then have poor Andy Burnham, who like the party as a whole, stands for what exactly ?, and, whose bold efforts to not split the party will merely undermine his own appeal, whilst doing nothing to prevent the split of the party.

I find myself wondering, what if there were no Labour party ?  What if it were left to the Liberals and the likes of the SNP and the Greens to define the opposition to the Tories, and to provide alternative votes at the ballot-box ?  Would the UK be any worse off if Labour simply ceased to exist ?  But then the hypotheticals of how we might have come to a world without Labour lead me to 'A Wonderful Life'*-style musings about what the world might look like had it never had a Tony Blair.  And so tempting as that line of thought is, I'm not sure I want to go there at the moment.

* à la Fry & Laurie obviously.