So the people of Scotland have spoken and their voice must be heard loud and clear. Let me congratulate the eight SNP MSPs who were elected last Thursday, across the board in Glasgow. Obviously from my own political point of view I would have preferred the voters in Glasgow to have put their crosses in different boxes but that didn’t happen.

What advice would I give to Glasgow’s new representatives in Holyrood? I’d tell them that the city wants you to be our voice in the Scottish parliament and not the other way round. To this end I hope they will stand up for Glasgow and get the city a fairer deal from their Government.

For almost a decade now successive SNP governments have cut Glasgow’s share of local government cash. That means that the city is some £450m down in funding now, than it would have been if its share had stayed at what it was when the SNP first came to power. That’s a lot of money, for a lot of services, for a lot of people.

In the next two years Glasgow has been forced to find £130m worth of savings to manage eye watering cuts which, in percentage terms, are nearly treble what the Tory Chancellor, George Osborne dared to pass on to Holyrood. That means that some of the SNP MSPs double speak has to stop. I’d advise the ‘new eight’ that they need to stop blaming the city council for cuts which have been imposed by their own Government! If they become ‘Glasgow Nationalists’ in this way and fight tirelessly for a new deal for city they’ll have my 100% support.

But why did Red Clydeside get painted yellow top to bottom last week. That is a question that needs an answer. Labour fought a brave campaign. Kezia Dugdale wanted to move Scotland on from the politics of the referendum and rightly so. But when the Labour Party was talking about inequality, poverty, and the economy the people of Scotland were voting for ‘Independence or NOT.’ The politics of the 2014 Referendum are still with us.

That’s why on Thursday in Glasgow the YES vote in the referendum in the city transferred to the SNP, taking all the seats. Elsewhere those seeking to preserve the Union saw the Tories as the best option for that. It seems impossible but Ruth Davidson has de-coupled the English Tories from Scotland. Throughout the campaign Davidson managed to get away with that political slight of hand. From the buffalo-riding leader there was never a mention of the Cameron/ Osborne Tories cutting the welfare state by a third, taxing the poor to give millionaires more and more in their bank accounts and

creating Britain’s biggest ever housing waiting lists. Not to mention an NHS in crisis to boot.

So Labour was hit again by a constitutional double whammy. I believe we have to face up to that. There needs to be a rethink. Labour must consider coming out in favour of a genuine federal Britain. That would be Home Rule for Scotland in a federal Britain. The other parts of the union would get equal powers for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The House of Commons would be the federal chamber to which the Home Rule parliaments would send delegates to a Federal Parliament.

The precise details need working out but if everything stays the same we are forever threatened by an Independent Scotland and the break up of the UK.

And what about the Labour Party in Scotland in a Federal Britain - it would be an autonomous party - an independent Scottish Labour Party arguing for real policies for the people but staying with the security of a UK that was still united in so many ways.

To use the words of the world famous playwright Bertolt Brecht, Labour cannot elect a new people because it does not agree with the way they voted. We have to acknowledge we have to change to face up to where the people are. It’s time for new ideas for a new Scotland and a new Britain.