What should Labour do to win back Scotland?

[DC Al Fine]

I think Labour is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The vagaries of FPTP have turned against them. Instead of having 40+ safe lefty seats in Scotland that they could take for granted, allowing them to cling to the middle in England, they now have 40 lost seats that want strong leftist MP's. If Labour tacks left, they risk losing even more English seats to the Tories & Lib Dems. If they ignore Scotland altogether and try to make up the seats in England, they basically become the Canadian Liberals

[DC Al Fine]

I think Labour is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The vagaries of FPTP have turned against them. Instead of having 40+ safe lefty seats in Scotland that they could take for granted, allowing them to cling to the middle in England, they now have 40 lost seats that want strong leftist MP's. If Labour tacks left, they risk losing even more English seats to the Tories & Lib Dems. If they ignore Scotland altogether and try to make up the seats in England, they basically become the Canadian Liberals

It seems to me that Labour needs to write Scotland off, and tack enough to in effect merge with the LD's, in other words, to just make that party go away. The policy differences between the LD's and Labour don't strike me as that great, if Labour just tacks a bit to the right.

There's Social Class. Labour is not and never will be a bourgeois party like the LDs.

But how does all of this translate into actual policy position differences between the Labour and the LD's at this point in time? I mean, maybe parties in the UK are more like social clubs than in the US, but still.

Formal policies and the base's views are two different things. Labour has a significant minority (or perhaps majority) that want to take it back to the left and would fight any merger with a "right wing party" tooth and nail.