Clear

I loathe the SNP. I know that several of them are lovely people. Why, even my own late father was an SNP Councillor in the Sixties. But as a party, their single reason for existing is utterly abhorrent to me.

Yet if Labour were to lose Glasgow East to them, then it could only fight back as the party of social justice and wealth redistribution, of the Union, and of an undisputed commitment to Catholic schools. New Labour simply cannot be that party.

The way would be cleared for the re-emergence of a party which cannot be otherwise.