Great article but they won't like to hear the truth.

Chapeau! Monsieur. Fortunately for Scotland they are not listening, neither to you nor the People.

Labour a people's party ought to be one of the best oximoron ever.

Yes, a very good article. Are Labour Party people listening? You might be surprised. Gerry would be taken more seriously if hadn't jumped ship for the nationalists, but a lot of people see him as mostly harmless and here he's talking sense.

He is a sharp analyst and get the Labourites completely right.

I've never thought nvery much of Mr Hassan - he's always struck me as being very full of himself.

"Alexander marketisation and neo-liberalism with a smiling face increasingly leaves Labour members, let alone the wider public, cold.
"

Marketisation? More like patronising socialist, nanny-statist drivel.

This perspective prompts me to think about how much at sea Labour must really be. If you look at lots of other northern European societies the main socialist party remains the dominant (if not domineering) force in politics. The rest - from a far left rump to the libertarian, center-right, Christian and Liberal parties - are all bit part players with limited influence as the alter-dominant party.

The examples are legion, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, even newer democracies like the baltic states. These are also the self-same countries that the Gnats point to as examples of 'like-Scotland' states - just independent that's all.

How ironic then that the very countries the Gnats point to are all - virtually every one - now so different in their political make up - in part because of the Gnats!

We may be a strange part of the UK - but we are more British than the Gnats care to admit.

Labour loss is no bad thing for Scotland - but having the gnats in their stead is no good thing either!

Best thing for Scotland is to evolve away from choosing between one form of socialist jabberwokie and another - lets return to our roots as entrepreneurs and innovators - not nanny's wee whiny bairns!

"Having been the political establishment for the past 50 years, Labour has fallen for its own hype and chosen to believe it has a divine right to rule."

Says it all really.

Labour's own smugness and complacency finally got the better of it last year at the Scottish General Election.

The Scottish public realised it had been taken for a ride for 50 years + by a Labour Party which was now doing the bidding of big business and the rich, by a Labour Party which wages illegal wars, and by a Labour Party which has moved so far away from its origins that it cannot retrace its steps.

i can see no sign that Scottish Labour has, or is likely to, come to terms with the fact that the world around it has changed drastically from the world that it knew, the world that produced it. Scottish Labour is, in short, no longer fit for purpose as a democratic institution under these changed circumstances, and it will go the way of all dinosaurs that fail to adapt.

There is no point in Labour's poisonous resentment of the SNP. That party is not the cause the present situation. The rise of the SNP is only one of innumerable symptoms of the ongoing changes that are taking place in Scotland, changes that Labour has conspicuously failed to recognise in its pathological craving for power.

The same can be said of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. With the SNP apparently poised to take over Labour's slot on the centre-left of the Scottish political spectrum, there is now a large and widening void on the centre-right. Some form of regrouping with an agenda actively tailored to the new circumstances is now a matter of urgency there.

What is needed is a radical reappraisal of Scotland's position within the drastically altered global community, and not simply the small world within these islands. London-centred policies have had their day.

Scotland is going through interesting times, and even more interesting developments lie ahead. The Labour Party is the ball and chain that is hindering progress, and its forthcoming extirpation as a political force can only be of benefit to the country. That process is clearly at an advanced stage, and looks like being completed with no external assistance.

Each century has its own politics (SNP's is 15C). Labour's was 20C, Libs 19C, Tory's 18C. The Greens should own the 21C, but sadly that party has been taken over by carpet baggers and socialist misfits.

New Labour is a recogntion of this political evolution, but (again sadly) its Third Way led to a cul de sac, and neither TB nor GB have the nous to redirect the party.

We really do need some new politicians who value our past roots, don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water by indulging in change for change's sake, but who are future oriented. Any suggestions?

not only is LondonControlledScotland Labour party in denial, it is in a very long sulk to oblivion

10# Vote SNP

Well said Bob Christie. The SNP are the first party in my lifetime to have Scotlands interests at heart. Labour are not labour any more. Bendy sees only the SNP as enemies. Instead of her trying to help her constituents, she lusts for power and couldnt care less about the people of Scotland. Her aim, and the other dodo parties too is to beat the SNP, not to improve Scotland. Maybe when labour stop taking us into illegal wars, allowing companies to close and move to other countries for cheap labour, and still sell their produce here. I may listen. However I will never vote for them again.
www.snp.org

Mr Hassan is a regional organiser of DEMOS - the self-appointed Marxist think-tank which conceived many of the core ideas of New Labour, including #The Third Way'. Check out their website:

http://www.demos.co.uk/content/aboutdemos

He is also a graduate of 'Common Purpose' a European Union front organisation which has infiltrated almost every level of local government and civic society in the UK.

Hassan is not a disinterested observer, he is a subversive who detests everything about traditional Britain.

Here is a comment on his last book

"Think-tankery demands novel jargon (iconoclastic) to dress up (re-brand) stale ideas (new, radical), outlandish cults (positive thinking), inflated claims (the knowledge economy) or outright banalities (ideas shape society). But always in such a way that no threat might be implied to their existing or potential position in the marketplace for ideas.
And the traffic runs in both directions. So-called action research routinely supplies the buyer with the right tune, one already composed by stringing together over-wrought corporate slogans about flexibility, connectivity, networks, social capital, social inclusion, knowledge, information, and so on.
Think tanks and policy centres revel in 'a vision of progress', 'thinking the unthinkable', 'bringing radical solutions to old problems', finding a 'future that works'.12" 12. Such inane clichés can be found, for instance, in the opening pages of Gerry Hassan and Chris Warhurst, A Moderniser's Guide to Scotland: A Different Future, Glasgow, 1999.

If labour ever want to command respect again they had better go and find their dummy which landed deep in the rough when they spat it.
Excellent article.

Do yourself a favour.
Don't vote Labour.

This article is fair and true but the rot set in within Labour around the time that different sects sought to get rid of Henry McLeish

HOwever this phrase "Thus, every week we get Alexander, going on about SNP "broken promises" although accurate is not a fault of Labour - as the major opposition party, it is their job to point out the SNP gov is not doing its job....and they are not...

#10 Why not vote Fascist? You certainly are one.

You have only two policies: tax and ban.

Congratulations to Gerry Hassan for telling it as it is, and to the Scotsman on running the story. Maybe there is hope for this newspaper after all.

*7 StephenfaeScotland wrote - Best thing for Scotland is to evolve away from choosing between one form of socialist jabberwokie and another - lets return to our roots as entrepreneurs and innovators - not nanny's wee whiny bairns!

That's the whole point as long as Scotland remains within the British state we will always be encouraged to be dependents and not entrepeneurial go-getters. That's why we need greater powers for our Parliament and preferrably independence, to make the decisions that will encourage economic growth and prosperity. Labour have had their chance and blew it big time, they have huge numbers reliant on benefits and hand outs and have done their best to destroy the curiosity and get up and go of the Scots....... Roll on independence.

Labour - contributed?
70+ years of labour rule in Glasgow and the place is still a dump

Any progress Scotland has made in the past 100 years is in spite of labour, not thanks to them