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A More Successful Scottish Socialist Party and other related ideas?

Time Enough

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How could you make the Scottish Socialist Party more successful? I get the sense, have the SNP and SLP crash and burn at the same time would help, or Tommy Sheridan not getting into a tiff with News of the World and all that.

Additionally I ponder, what would the impact be of groups like JMIP/Forward Wales or PBP interacting and collaborating more with the SSP? It did seem that there was some energy for interaction but collaboration seemed a bit too much, maybe a No RESPECT situation could lead to more collaboration or something.
 
I get the sense, have the SNP and SLP crash and burn at the same time would help…
Or have Scottish Labour implode either before the Scottish Nationalist Party became firmly established or repositioned themselves to the left. If Labour is fighting amongst itself then the Scottish Socialist Party would potentially be the only other viable left-wing alternative.
 
Best way for the SSP to survive is to further discredit the SLP - perhaps by having no Lib Dem coalition and therefore no check on an orthodox Blairite programme on things like tuititon fees. Finding anyway for the Scottish unions to detach further another key idea. Also keep Sheridan's personal life under wraps.
 
Best way for the SSP to survive is to further discredit the SLP - perhaps by having no Lib Dem coalition and therefore no check on an orthodox Blairite programme on things like tuititon fees. Finding anyway for the Scottish unions to detach further another key idea. Also keep Sheridan's personal life under wraps.

It always goes back to that when you discuss a more successful non Labour left in the UK doesn't it? You need to do something about the unions channeling working class organization to Labour no matter the current stance of the party. This needs to break down to open the field on the left.
 
It always goes back to that when you discuss a more successful non Labour left in the UK doesn't it? You need to do something about the unions channeling working class organization to Labour no matter the current stance of the party. This needs to break down to open the field on the left.
Have Blair, Mandelson and co go "fuck it" and fully pursue state funding of parties and you probably can get something like this happening.
 
Have Blair, Mandelson and co go "fuck it" and fully pursue state funding of parties and you probably can get something like this happening.

That'd cause Labour not to need the unions, which mean they can make moves that'd piss them off and lose them entirely but they probably still need to make that move. Considering the Labour Right would be in charge, I'm sure they'd manage.
 
Is there any way to get the SSP as the main party of independence? They decide that the best chance they have is in an independent Scotland and back the idea fully. It would take very specific circumstances though combining Labour imploding and the SNP still being positioned to the centre-right, or before they got firmly established.
 
and the SNP still being positioned to the centre-right, or before they got firmly established.
I was thinking if John Swinney is more successful then you probably get a more Third Wayer style SNP in terms of policy.
Also keep Sheridan's personal life under wraps.
That’s also the other elephant in the room, makes me wonder if he fall down a man hole cover or something and someone like Colin Fox takes over in the Mid 00s.
 
Have Blair, Mandelson and co go "fuck it" and fully pursue state funding of parties and you probably can get something like this happening.
Probably lead to Proto-TUSC if anything, which is an idea.
 
Probably lead to Proto-TUSC if anything, which is an idea.

That's more likely to have some staying power than Yet Another Left Wing Splinter, I think.

It would also be interesting to see what it does to politics within the unions in question, if any of the big ones decide to affiliate with it, because that would be a bigger debate than "how much cash do we want to give Labour this year" and "which faction of the party do we align with".
 
That's more likely to have some staying power than Yet Another Left Wing Splinter, I think.
God, I really need to ponder that Galloway does his stupid Straight Left party idea over RESPECT at some point.
 
That’s also the other elephant in the room, makes me wonder if he fall down a man hole cover or something and someone like Colin Fox takes over in the Mid 00s.
My understanding of the man is that, despite his now sixteen years and still going tenure, Colin was a reluctant leadership candidate at the time of Sheridan's downfall; he was compared to Corbyn in that he didn't really expect to necessarily win nor really want it himself in that way. Inner-party factionalism has played its major party in his continued leadership since then but also the vacuum of political talent that's existed there since.

I agree that the easiest way to have the SSP prosper would be a combination of somehow avoiding the public downfall of Tommy Sheridan (Easier said than done given he's thin-skinned enough to take the papers to court for libel over something that's true and try to take his party down with him for it) and a collapse of SLP. You'd probably see SLP's left flank peel of and gravitate to the SSP therein moderating it; the SSP was a left-wing to far-left party at its foundation with its roots on Scottish Militant's role on the Anti-Poll Tax Movement and it maintained that socialist revolutionary rhetoric and belief within its leadership too. Unless you see a shift to a more 'professional political party' attitude, it's also going to have limits to how much it can grow.
 
It's really telling that all the left wing splinters are weird ego driven projects.

Labour succeeded historically because it started with the grassroot machine of the unions then made a party out of it. I expect it would have floundered if it had only been a splinter of a few loud left leaning Liberal personalities and merged back into the party (potentially having won the argument in the meanwhile considering historical political drift).

If you want to reproduce that you need your own grassroot organization of some kind.
 
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