Scottish Labour's leaders cannot keep blaming Westminster for the collapse at the ballot box, says VINCE MILLS
THE late Ralph Miliband wrote one of the best books about the history of the Labour Party, Parliamentary Socialism: A Study in the Politics of Labour (Allen & Unwin, 1961). Albeit of course it doesn’t cover the last 60 years.
Miliband, the father of David and Ed, opens the book by making the statement that, as a democratic socialist party, Labour had always been among the most dogmatic — not about socialism but about the use of parliamentary as opposed to extra-parliamentary forms of struggle.
His view at that time was that Labour under Hugh Gaitskell was not a vehicle for socialist advance and the leadership of the rather more “left-wing” Harold Wilson did nothing to change his mind.
Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT
While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT
Research shows Farage mainly gets rebel voters from the Tory base and Labour loses voters to the Greens and Lib Dems — but this doesn’t mean the danger from the right isn’t real, explains historian KEITH FLETT
KEITH FLETT traces how the ‘world’s most successful political party’ has imploded since Thatcher’s fall, from nine leaders in 30 years to losing all 16 English councils, with Reform UK symbolically capturing Peel’s birthplace, Tamworth — but the beast is not dead yet



