IT WOULD be perfectly understandable if Jeremy Corbyn chose to body-swerve next month’s grand fund-raising dinner for the Labour Party in Scotland. It wouldn’t quite be like Banquo’s ghost gate-crashing Macbeth’s banquet for, although Labour’s Scottish nobility tried to do away with Mr Corbyn, they didn’t quite succeed. The UK leader’s presence though, would send a chill running through a few tables and, for this alone the event would be worth the admission price.

Mr Corbyn though, appears to be in a conciliatory mood following his resounding re-election as leader in the face of the pathetic attempt to de-throne him by his party’s wonderland wing. That’s two resounding leadership endorsements in a year in the face of a campaign of such vindictiveness from within his own party that it recalled the way in which England’s red-tops used to bait Arthur Scargill. Yet there he is scattering favours and choosing to turn the other cheek as he sets himself to the task once more of re-connecting the Labour Party to its roots and re-introducing the Blairite seditionists to the word ‘Socialism’.

Who knows what Corbyn might have achieved in his first year as leader if he hadn’t been compelled to spend most of it fighting treachery amongst his parliamentary colleagues? It’s a tragedy that his leadership was being grossly undermined by an assortment of careerist chancers at a point in time when the Conservatives have rarely been more vulnerable. Throughout the early part of the summer The Nasty Party was enthusiastically living up to the sobriquet bestowed upon it by its current leader who could be the first ever Daughter of the Manse who things that the Feeding of the 5,000 was The Messiah’s endorsement of food-banks. As several of its most senior lieutenants, led by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, knowingly misled the country over EU funding, they also dragged their party into the swamp previously occupied by UKIP and the other vanguards of the far right.

One leader and half a cabinet later the Tories have given the rest of Europe an expert seminar on how not to govern. Faced with Brexit, the biggest constitutional, economic and social challenge in modern British history, the Tory leadership has resembled a drunk man at midnight wrestling with a kebab and the keys to his own house: they haven’t got a clue. Their rush to embrace the language and values of UKIP is merely an unpleasant manifestation of their inner turmoil.

Yet, where was Labour in all of this? Instead of exposing this existential crisis at the heart of modern Conservatism its gilded Parliamentary wasters chose instead to join the right-wing press they had previously reviled in spreading malicious falsehoods and calumny about their democratically elected leader and colleague. These good ol’ boys then got themselves up a posse headed by a hapless deadbeat and forced an extremely damaging leadership election when they ought to have been baiting the Tories.

And where too was the leadership of the Labour Party in Scotland while all of this was unfolding? It’s not as if there wasn’t much to occupy its parliamentary group and a burgeoning leadership support structure which is funded by £10,500 from each of its 24 MSPs’ office allowances. The immediate task of ensuring the Scottish Conservatives only have one Holyrood term as official opposition ought to have been front and centre of their thoughts and central to their stratagems; that and exposing the continuing inability of the SNP government to make good on any of its lofty rhetoric about challenging social inequality.

Sadly, the Scottish leadership chose instead to back the wrong man in the UK leadership campaign; the latest in an abject trail of hubris and monumental misjudgement that has bedevilled the party in

Scotland for more than a decade now. The ultimatum delivered to every MSP that they must sign a daft letter endorsing Owen Smith’s doomed challenge to Mr Corbyn caused a lot of unnecessary and ill-affordable friction amongst Labour ranks at Holyrood. The conduct of Kezia Dugdale and Ian Murray, Labour’s sole representative at Westminster, was also questionable. At a time in the party’s history when leadership, loyalty and grace were required neither of them displayed an ounce of it. Instead they allowed themselves to be influenced by anti-Corbyn propaganda, led by the usual suspects. It seems that lessons from Scottish Labour’s catastrophic conduct during the first Scottish independence referendum have not yet been learned.

Even now the ramifications of this lack of leadership are being felt. MSPs and activists who were known to favour Mr Corbyn in the leadership election have been subject to a degree of overt intimidation. Concerns have also been expressed that the party is being unduly influenced by Ian Murray and that too much time and energy is being concentrated on Edinburgh. One activist told me: “If Labour are to make up any lost ground it will have to begin in Glasgow and the West, not on the leafy streets of South Edinburgh.”

Nicola Sturgeon’s unexpected move to fire the starting gun for a second Scottish independence referendum will also ask some challenging questions of Labour in Scotland. The Tories have already set out their stall on this: they are portraying themselves as the party north of the border interested in saving the Union. Ms Dugdale should be putting her front-bench team on a war footing now. The party’s existing response to a second referendum – it won’t support it – is facile and meaningless. Such a response sounds more convincing when it is espoused by Tories.

Instead of repeating the same old anti-SNP clichés, they should be getting back to doing what they always do best: attacking the Tories. They could start by pointing out why the Tories are so keen on saving the Union and telling people that Ruth Davidson and her party don’t really give a monkey’s tail about it. To them, saving the Union is only meaningful insofar as it is a tool to preserve the ancient privileges and fiefdoms of the English establishment. If it ever came to pass that only a union with Russia could preserve these privileges the Tories would embrace it.

Alex Rowley, Scottish Labour’s Deputy Leader, seems to have grasped the seriousness of the situation. In a speech on Thursday night he backed the SNP government’s position on a soft Brexit. He said: “If it is right for the City of London to get a deal on access, then it is equally right for Scotland to state the case for tariff free access to the single market, for Scotland to be in a position to agree immigration policy to meet the needs of our economy, and for Scotland to set conditions to ensure no rowing back on employment rights which support wages and workplace justice.”

Such sentiments make it much easier for Labour supporters to back a second referendum and even to support independence in the event of the Tories turning out the lights.