HAVING found itself on the winning side of the referendum, Labour finds it is losing the very communities it depends on for electoral success.

In the next three years there are elections to the UK Parliament, Holyrood then council elections in 2017.

The story behind the referendum is the position of Labour in Glasgow and the west of Scotland.

It was seriously out of step all over Glasgow, in North Lanarkshire and in West Dunbartonshire, areas it once enjoyed a monopoly of support.

In the last 20 years Labour has gone from being untouchable in the city to coming second to the SNP at Holyrood and in the referendum.

There are no cliffs in Glasgow, but if there were, on the edge is where you would find the Labour vote.

Last week, combined with the 2011 defeat, makes the 2012 victory by Gordon Matheson all the more remarkable.

During the Blair years many vowed never to vote for the party again and have stuck to their word - and the SNP has picked up many of the disaffected.

The writing has been on the wall ever since the enormous anti-war protest through Glasgow before the Iraq invasion.

Too many people cannot identify with the Labour party anymore.

Each time there is a humbling at the ballot box the response is the same: 'we need to listen'. This time it was 'we need to go into the communities and understand peoples' concerns'.

But they should be in there already, all the time, part of the communities.

Many are trying but their efforts are being undermined by a UK leadership which has nothing in common with working class people.

It is difficult for many to see any great difference between Ed Miliband and David Cameron. And while Labour in England have been stealing Tory clothes, the SNP has walked off with Scottish Labour's wardrobe and is coming back to empty the house.

No matter how much Labour and leader Johann Lamont talk about college places for working class kids being sacrificed for free university education, the council tax freeze benefitting middle classes but savaging local services for the elderly, or free prescription charges giving more to the better off, the Tory association speaks much louder.

The Better Together pact which impressed few, will only make it worse. It will take years to disentangle the alliance with the Tories and the Lib Dems, by which time it could be too late.

The Tories once enjoyed huge support in Scotland - now they are an endangered species. If Labour doesn't get it right this time they could heading down a road from which there is no way back.