IN another time, the week just passed would have been considered a good one for the UK left. The pitilessness of the right seemed to have been exposed in all its shame and then skittled. The anti-Islam activist, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, was ruled to have libelled a Syrian schoolboy and made to pay him £100,000 in damages.

The news of Mr Robinson’s latest courtroom defeat came as Nigel Farage – a millionaire stockbroker – filmed himself from the deck of a luxury yacht railing against a boatload of refugees in the English Channel.

The following day, Dawn Butler, the Labour MP for London’s Brent Central constituency, was ejected from the Mother of all Parliaments for saying something truthful: that Boris Johnson tells lies. Many people close to the UK Prime Minister know he tells lies, including his former chief aide. Ms Butler though, didn’t merely say that Mr Johnson tells lies but that his premiership travels on them.

Elsewhere, the UK Trade Minister Liz Truss made one of those visits to Scotland reminding you that many English Tories think we’re all still running around the glens, hunting wild beasties. She thinks Douglas Ross will be Scotland’s next First Minister and said Brexit would be good for Scotland. The next day large gaps began to appear in the nation’s supermarkets.

READ MORE: Is Johnson the man to lead the Tories at another election given his record?

You soon realised, though, that short of cutting all public sector pay by 50%, nothing appears capable of waking from their slumbers those tasked with opposing the UK Government.

While the Tories’ flank has been exposed, search parties have thus far failed to determine the whereabouts of Anas Sarwar, Labour leader in Scotland. He was last heard of immediately after the Scottish election talking about making Holyrood a “Covid Recovery Parliament”. Any sightings of a well-groomed young chap wrapped tightly in a Union Jack should be reported to party headquarters, Bath Street, Glasgow.

Meanwhile, we’re told that Sir Keir Starmer is busy harrying the last Socialist remnant of his party. But look, there he was in Blackpool, one of Labour’s former Red Wall constituencies lately annexed by the Tories. Here he spoke with former Labour voters. Presumably, they lapsed because on realising this party isn’t much different now from the Tories it would be better if they simply went with the more successful of the two. Perfectly straightforward and understandable.

Sir Keir said he was proposing a jobs promise to ensure every young person away from work for six months is offered an education, training or employment. This would be part of something called “Make, Buy and Sell More in Britain”.

This refrain was reminiscent of Gordon Brown’s “British jobs for British workers” clarion call 12 years ago when he too embraced patriotism. Mr Brown was Labour’s last Prime Minister and, based on every recent poll, his status seems secure.

Sir Keir’s project to reach out to the lost faithful sits alongside another new Labour scheme called Renaissance which also seeks to re-connect with recalcitrants. Thus we have the idiosyncrasy of a French word being used to convey the concept of ‘Make, Buy and Sell More in Britain’.

Renaissance is being driven by Stephen Kinnock, Labour’s front bench spokesperson for ‘Asia and the Pacific’. This shadow post, at the very least, provides a launch-pad for a lucrative position in the global diplomatic clamjamfrey which has been so benevolent to his family. His mum was a Member of the European Parliament, his dad was an EU commissioner and his wife is a former Prime Minister of Denmark.

Mr Kinnock (fils) was responsible for sticking so many needles in effigies of Jeremy Corbyn that he might also have become a delegate at the World Voodoo Congress. Despite the traitorous activities of MPs like him, Jeremy Corbyn – the only Labour leader in 30 years who was actually a Socialist – wrecked Theresa May’s majority in 2017. If they hadn’t worked so assiduously against Mr Corbyn, he might actually have become Prime Minister at the head of a coalition government. He and Sir Keir are a big part of the problem.

The UK’s hard right, now embedded at the heart of government, know they can keep pushing the boundaries of what is considered decent and honest with impunity. Labour has no coherent strategy, beyond one of wait-and-hope, to replace them.

Between them, Dawn Butler and Marcus Rashford have done more to highlight the insidious nature of the Johnson administration than Sir Keir and his acolytes north and south of the Border. There’s a reason why The Spectator is targeting the young Manchester United footballer with its propaganda.

Nowhere in Labour’s alternative offering is there anything to do with an enlightened tax regime or working in partnership with the trade union movement to protect workers’ rights in the long Covid winter. There is no industrial strategy for the UK’s Blackpools to create sustainable, well-paid jobs and affordable housing. There is no plan to reform the banking system, or to help small, local enterprises to thrive free from the predations of the City.

Jeremy Corbyn, in promising to govern for the many and not the few, produced a detailed plan to use low global interest rates to stimulate growth in those regions the Tories are affecting to love.

In Scotland, where an exit strategy is tantalisingly within reach, the ruling party has also embraced neo-liberalism. It chooses to be advised by billionaires who think economic recovery rests in creating more billionaires. It recently appointed Sir Nick Macpherson, the man who weaponised currency at the 2014 referendum, to yet another of its economic advisory bureaux.

He will be in familiar company. The Scottish Government is also advised by such as the banker Benny Higgins, chairman of the estates company owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, the largest private land-owner in Scotland. Andrew Wilson, founder of the secretive lobbying firm Charlotte Street Partners, chaired their Growth Commission.

Last week’s revelations by The Herald in partnership with The Ferret, exposed the Scottish Government as little more than a business gateway exchange for multi-nationals and billionaires.

Capitalism – as it always does – is already planning to ensure its interests hold sway in both post-Covid and post-Scottish independence. Where is the Left to fight for the interests of the many?

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