What does everybody think about Jeremy Corbyn’s new Your Party? I quite like Corbyn’s left-wing views - much like the Labour Party of old which was (at least sometimes) electable. It was reported a couple wif weeks ago that the new party would be against Scottish and Welsh independence, but I’ve been reading into it a bit more and it seems they will be taking notice of the two countries’ wishes on self-determination. If that is the case - and given the defections we’ve witnessed so far - Your Party may be the best way of securing Indy? I’m interested to hear what others think. Slainte!

Breaking the Gravy Chain – The Necessity of Abstentionism. A GUEST. ARTICLE FROM THE ISP CANDIDATE So the Rutherglen and Hamilton West campaign is nearly over. During the past few weeks, we’ve handed out thousands of leaflets, met lots of people, had tons of conversations, made a fair few friends (and enemies) and we had an entertaining hustings with Women Won’t Wheest, which like all good hustings, had blow up chickens and a candidate blowing up at the end. It’s been a blast. And it’s been a good testing of the waters for some of our policies. ‘Why should we vote for you?’ has been the most common question. People out there are ready to engage – but they need a reason to do so. We could give a number of answers to that, but we think that the best answer to it is our policy on abstention from Westminster. We think that is the standout reason that you should vote ISP. And that you should not vote for any party that doesn’t abstain from Westminster. Bear with us and we’ll explain why we think this is the policy that marks out the political sheep from the goats. Let’s explain very briefly what abstention means for the MP. It means that they do not take the oath to the monarch and does not attend Parliament sittings or committees. They cannot vote in debates. They can still pursue cases on behalf of their constituents and represent them individually to Westminster on individual issues. They can have an office staff who will manage their cases and the staff can draw a salary. But the MP gets no salary – unless they take the oath and attend Parliament. Do you remember in August 2014, that procession of Labour politicians going up Buchanan St, accompanied by the best troller of the referendum campaign, playing the Imperial March from Star Wars and shouting for people to bow down to their imperial masters? How we laughed. Fast forward a few months after the shock of the No vote and we were sending down 56 nationalists in their place. That’ll sort them out, we thought. But it didn’t. And right now, the independence movement is reeling from that failure. Our party and others were formed as a result of it. And if we want to avoid repeating that failure, we need to understand what led to it. And to do that we need to understand our past. For we are in chains but we cannot see them.