The most persistently delusional myth in modern UK politics was evident once more in the aftermath of the Gorton & Denton by-election.

Thus, the Green Party were universally described as left-wing and progressive. Usually, it’s presented in the context of Labour being marooned in a narrow space between the Greens on the left and UK Reform on the right.

In truth, both of these parties – culturally and politically – share much of the same territory. Indeed, it could be argued that in the real test of a party’s left-wing authenticity – their attitudes towards class – UK Reform are probably more in tune with the instincts of Britain’s working-class communities.

Neither of them though, really gives a monkey’s about improving the lives and prospects of people living in our most disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Reform view them merely as fodder to further the political careers and bank balances of some very rich and entitled people at the top of their party. They do this by a particularly insidious form of race-baiting which suggests to working-class communities that refugees and asylum-seekers are their enemies.

The history of the far right in UK politics has always used this as a convenient way of diverting the gaze of working-class people away from their real enemies: the predatory capitalism of global corporatism and the militaristic fetishism which maintains its profits by sending young men and women to die in conflicts far away from home.

At least the Greens reject the militarism of NATO and its decades-long ruinous diplomacy in Eastern Europe. But the party’s recent conduct in domestic politics, especially in Scotland, exposes them to the charge that they have an abiding and visceral loathing for working-class people and problematic attitudes towards women and some religious minorities. Their left-wing credentials can be filed under ‘Bearsden Bolshevism’.

Their rank and file members may not personally have any animus to the........

© Herald Scotland