United Kingdom

not "assertion that is still in question". Sorry if I sounded dismissive on that.

And I don't defend anything Dugdale's done. I don't know enough about how Labour is structured on an internal level to be able to determine if Corbyn had any capacity to push her out as Scottish Labour leader.

What would you have had him do regarding the Scottish seats? I agree with you that there should not have been Labour-Tory cooperation, but was he supposed to withdraw Labour candidates from every Scottish seat they didn't hold other than the one seat each held(going into the elections) by the Tories and the LibDems?

To do that, he'd have to at least get an absolute confidence-and-supply arrangement set up with the SNP, and to carry on with such an arrangement, the SNP would probably have to agree to put aside the goal of a second referendum for at least the next parliament, to agree that, for at least the next five years, Scotland would remain part of the UK. Can you imagine Sturgeon agreeing to anything remotely like that, and hanging on to her job as leader if she did?

As to paying for the programmes, Labour laid out some relatively modest changes in tax policy to provide the funds. It's right there in the manifesto. Even their opponents in the campaign generally conceded the proposals were costed.

Anything that cost less than what Labour proposed in that manifesto wouldn't be worth doing, because little that is inexpensive can produce progressive or social democratic results.