Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s newly announced “Your Party” is already raising concerns among Scottish left activists who warn the venture could collapse before it starts if it continues ignoring the national question. The harsh reality? Scotland’s left has watched this movie before – and it always ends in failure.

Bella Caledonia sums it up: “Limited consideration of Scotland has taken place in this attempt to get a left of Labour electoral challenge up and running,” observes Democratic Left Scotland, while Richie Venton of the Scottish Socialist Party warns that “any new party that seeks to operate in Scotland must respect the right of the Scottish people to self-determination and must not be a mere branch office of a London-centric project.

This isn’t just Scottish sensitivity – it’s strategic necessity. The historical record is unforgiving: centralized left parties that ignore national questions don’t just fail in Scotland, they fragment entirely. Spain’s catastrophic left retreat in the 1990s offers a perfect case study of what happens when socialists dismiss plurinational realities.

The Spanish Warning: How Centralism Destroyed the Left

The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) once dominated the left. The left magazine Viento Sur describes its failures. By the 1990s, it had become a “neoliberal force with progressive trappings,” transforming into what critics called a “party-cartel” that monopolized politics through state financing while abandoning its working-class identity. But PSOE’s fatal error wasn’t just embracing neoliberalism – it was promoting a divisive “theory of two national communities” that alienated Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia.

In the Basque Country, PSOE manufactured a false division between communities, casting Basques as “bourgeois and racist” nationalists opposed to “working-class, socialist, and universalist” speakers of Castilian Spanish. This strategy poisoned dialogue and drove communities apart. This wasn’t just bad politics – it was organizational suicide.

Izquierda Unida (IU), formed as a left alternative to PSOE, repeated the same mistakes. Despite its anti-capitalist rhetoric, IU struggled with a chronic inability to accept the plurinational reality of the Spanish state. Strong centralist currents within IU viewed national demands as “sectarian” or “right-wing,” fatally undermining the party’s ability to build genuine grassroots support in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia.

The results were devastating. In Galicia, the rise of the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG) captured the “vote of discontent” while IU’s components struggled to reach even 3% of the vote. The lesson couldn’t be clearer: Spain’s alternative left faces a binary choice: either genuinely champion the distinct national identities and self-determination rights of its regions, or accept political marginalization and eventual collapse.

Scotland’s Clear Message: Autonomy Works, Branch Offices Don’t

Scottish left parties have learned this lesson the hard way. The most successful examples – the Scottish Socialist Party and Scottish Greens – operate as genuinely independent entities, not subordinate branches of UK-wide organizations.

The Scottish Greens emerged in 1990 when the former UK Green Party deliberately separated into two independent parties. Today, they’re completely separate and unique with their own leaders, membership, and policies. Their strong support for Scottish independence isn’t incidental – it’s integral to their identity and success.

Similarly, the Scottish Socialist Party formed in 1998 from the Scottish Socialist Alliance, explicitly as a distinct Scottish entity. The SSP unequivocally supports independence, framing it through “internationalist rather than nationalist concerns” and advocating for a “Scottish socialist republic.”

Contrast this with parties that maintained centralized structures. The Respect Party, “established in London” with no distinct Scottish presence, made virtually no impact north of the border and even lost supporters in England who opposed its organising north of the border. The pattern is clear: Scottish voters reject “branch office” politics.

Ross Greer, the Scottish Green MSP, put it bluntly: “The idea of a new London-based party trying to establish a ‘branch office’ in Scotland without a clear understanding of our distinct political context is deeply concerning.”

Why “Your Party” Risks Disaster

Troubling early indicators suggest “Your Party” risks repeating these historical errors. Scottish commentators describe the initial launch as “badly bungled and incoherent,” with conflicting reports about organizational structure and minimal Scottish input.

Helena from ‘No Justice’ captures the frustration: Rolling out “Jeremy Corbyn as a ‘left-leader’ and harking back (uncritically) to how wonderful he was” isn’t “serious politics.” The party risks being dismissed as nostalgic English leftism that ignores Scottish political realities.

Most critically, “Your Party” has yet to clarify its position on Scottish self-determination—a silence that Scottish activists are already interpreting as indifference.. This isn’t a minor oversight – it’s a deal-breaker for many. As Ross Greer notes, “Scotland needs a strong, independent voice on the left, not another Westminster-controlled outfit.”

The electoral arithmetic is brutal. Connor Beaton warns that attempting to contest Holyrood elections without broad engagement could “end up like RISE in 2016, winning a derisory share of the vote which then contributes to the whole project’s collapse.”

The Platform for Socialism and Independence

The good news is that Scottish socialists are already organizing to prevent this disaster. The recently launched Platform for Socialism and Independence brings together Aberdeen Marxist Caucus, the Republican Socialist Platform, Scottish Socialist Youth, and Socialists for Independence. It represents exactly the kind of proactive intervention needed. Rather than waiting for “Your Party” to impose a structure from London, these groups are engaging strategically while maintaining core principles around independence and Scottish autonomy.

The Path Forward: Embrace Plurinationalism

Jamie Driscoll, involved in “Your Party’s” formation, seems to understand the stakes, emphasizing “significant autonomy in the nations and regions” and rejecting a “top-down London-run party.” But good intentions aren’t enough – organizational structure matters.

Based on successful precedents, “Your Party” needs to:

• Unequivocally support Scottish self-determination– not as a tactical position, but as a foundational principle. The Spanish experience shows that half-measures create “artificial barriers of incommunication.”
• Foster genuine autonomy– Scottish and Welsh wings must have their own leadership, decision-making structures, and tailored political programmes. The Scottish Greens’ model of formal separation or the SSP’s autonomous development offer proven templates.
• Build grassroots power first– Instead of immediate Holyrood campaigns, focus on local organizing and council elections in 2027. This allows time to develop genuine Scottish leadership and avoid the “excessive politicismo” that doomed Spain’s IU.
• Engage existing Scottish movements– Work with independence campaigns, climate justice groups, Palestine solidarity, and other progressive forces rather than competing with them.

Learning from Failure in the Spanish State

The Spanish left’s 1990s retreat wasn’t inevitable – it resulted from strategic choices that prioritized institutional power over grassroots organizing and centralized control over plurinational democracy. These same pressures exist today.

“Your Party” can succeed, but only if it learns from these failures. The choice is stark: embrace genuine autonomy for Scotland and Wales, or watch another promising left initiative fragment on the rocks of unresolved national questions.

The Scottish left has been clear about what it needs. The question is whether Corbyn and Sultana are listening – or whether they’re destined to repeat the mistakes that have buried left parties across Europe.

As Richie Venton warns: “We’ve seen countless attempts to build left-wing unity in Scotland only to see them fail because of a lack of understanding of the Scottish political landscape and the need for a genuinely independent Scottish socialist movement.”

This is “Your Party’s” moment of truth. The early warning signs are flashing red, but the fatal mistakes haven’t been locked in yet. Corbyn and Sultana can still demonstrate they understand what every successful Scottish left party has learned: revolutionary democracy means unequivocally supporting self-determination. The choice is stark—act now to embrace genuine Scottish autonomy, or watch another promising left initiative fragment on familiar rocks.

Reposted from Red Mole Substack