ADMIRERS of The Sopranos will recall the episode in which Tony and company stage a “tough love” intervention to help a family member with a drug problem. Typically for the New Jersey crew, warm words are soon replaced by blows and the hapless addict, instead of being set on a new path, ends the evening in hospital with a fractured skull. Whaddya gonna do?

One cannot imagine such a scene in the offices of the Fabian Society in Petty France, Westminster, as the think-tank gathered to discuss its latest discussion paper. Surely the good denizens of the Society are more Bloomsbury than Bada Bing!, more advocates of William Morris than “whacking”? Well … looking around for a title to sum up the current state the Labour Party is in, the Society came up with the rather brutal “Stuck”, which calls to mind a pig that has poked his front half through a hole in the fence to get to the truffles on the other side, only to find its hind quarters are refusing to follow. Not a terribly elegant picture, but what is one to do?

Few will have been surprised at an analysis telling Labour it cannot win a majority at the next general election. This is what the polls have been saying since Theresa May took over the Tory leadership. Even if only babes in arms believe the polls these days, one cannot ignore the Grand Canyon-like gap between Labour and the Conservatives, or the party losing its deposit at Richmond Park, or coming fourth in Sleaford and North Hykeham. Matters have grown so delicate that Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, who has hitherto acted as a sort of third Bee Gee to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell, has even appeared to suggest the band might split if the polls stay “awful”. Though he later said he was right behind Mr Corbyn, some damage had been done. Listen carefully and you might hear a cracking sound coming from the ice on which Mr Corbyn is pirouetting.

Even so, for the Fabian Society to be the one to give the ice a stamp is noteworthy. As one of the founding organisations of the Labour Party, the Fabians are in with the Labour bricks. From party constitution and welfare state to the minimum wage and New Labour, they are famously the party’s “critical friend”, always there with advice and support. As a friend, Stuck, subtitled “How Labour is too weak to win and too strong to die”, does strike a more in sorrow than in anger tone, but there is no mistaking the depth of concern.

The paper’s author, Andrew Harrop, the general secretary of the Fabian Society, argues that when an election comes, whether it is a snap poll this year or the scheduled 2020 contest, Labour cannot win on its own. On current performance, the Society estimates, the number of Labour seats could fall from 231 at present to well under 200, giving the party its worst result since 1935. Yet despite the need for action, an “uneasy calm has descended on Labour”, and on Brexit in particular the party’s position is inconsistent and muffled. “This is the calm of stalemate, of insignificance, even of looming death.”

Strong stuff. Is this the beginning of the end, then, for Labour? Not so fast, says Mr Harrop. In aligning itself with other left of centre parties, Labour could form an anti-Tory majority at Westminster. For viewers in the north that would mean Labour working with the SNP. There. It has been said. Consider that cat liberated from the bag. In fact, consider a whole gang of felines to have been sent running, none of which will take kindly to herding.

No wonder Labour north and south of the border were quick yesterday to dismiss suggestions of a progressive alliance with other parties, with MSP Anas Sarwar calling the notion “laughable”. Amused he may be, but that will not stop the talk between now and the next election.

There are all sorts of reasons why a deal would not work, starting with the simple fact that Scottish Labour and the SNP are two tribes which cannot stick each other. But there are particular pitfalls in such a plan for Scottish Labour. If one takes some of the ideas in the Fabian paper to their logical conclusion, the party here could end up in a very unhappy place indeed.

Mr Harrop argues, for instance, that the way back for Labour in general lies in becoming the party of the “cultural middle”, a home for the “millions of voters who were neither die-hard remainers nor leavers; neither Richmond Park global citizens nor Faragiste pub bores”. How, Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale might ask, does such an analysis help her going into the local elections and at Holryood? The short answer is it does not.

While Scotland figures in the Fabian paper, it does so largely as a cautionary tale. At one point the analysis even appears to write the country off as far as Labour is concerned. “In Scotland there is no sign of recovery,” says Mr Harrop, gloomy doctor to patient. If seats are to be won they will come from outwith Scotland. If this analysis is accepted, Scottish Labour would have to abandon the idea of having a presence in Westminster and accept that it is councils, Holyrood, or bust for its elected representatives from now on. Scottish Labour will have become independent by default, rather as a child abandoned by its parents becomes independent. Scottish Labour – the Home Alone party of British politics. Not even a branch office any more.

Should Scottish Labour accept such a fate? Concentrate on renewing itself from the ground up locally, fighting street by street, postcode by postcode, governing body by governing body? That would certainly be adopting the favoured tactics of Mr Harrop in showing the party was “from here”, but it would diminish Scottish Labour in the eyes of the electorate. In appearing to lack ambition for itself, it would look as if it had a similar attitude to Scotland.

One can see a host of other problems for Scottish Labour if the Westminster field is left to the SNP, not least Labour having to operate in an alliance in London and in opposition in Edinburgh. Look how well that turned out for the Liberal Democrats.

Mr Harrop’s paper is best seen as a useful starting point when it comes to a Labour recovery outwith Scotland, but as for what ails Scottish Labour it is but a baby step towards finding a remedy. That is a job for Scottish Labour but, like Labour as a whole when it comes to a response to Brexit, the party here is frozen, as if in some sort of political mannequin challenge. Too weak to win, and too strong to die, says the Fabian Society of Labour at the UK level. Scottish Labour needs someone to dispense some similarly tough love if it is not to go down in history as too feart to change and too stubborn to die.