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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then Labour was virtually wiped out in Scotland of course in the General Election, the party took heavy losses at the hands of the SNP, reduced to just one MP there but could a more left-leaning leader help the party regain ground in Scotland and should the SNP therefore be worried?  I am joined now from Dundee by the Deputy Leader of the SNP, Stewart Hosie.  Are you a worried man then?  A very good morning to you Mr Hosie, are you worried that a left-leaning Labour party under Mr Corbyn might win back some of those Labour defectors in Scotland to the SNP?  

STEWART HOSIE: No, I’m not.  If you look the most recent opinion polls the SNP lead over Labour has remained substantial and that’s at a time when Jeremy Corbyn was certain to win or indeed did win so at face value, no, that doesn’t appear to be the case and also to talk about left/right in the way you are is to misunderstand things.  Yes, we are anti-austerity, yes we are fairness, we are also very much pro-growth, these things go together in our book so it isn’t a simple case of left/right and of course Mr Corbyn, who is a very pleasant man, isn’t without his challenges when it comes to what one might call left-wing politics.  He may be against Trident but he needs to bring his entire party with him and that might be a significant challenge indeed.  

DM: Will it be?  Are there lessons also for the SNP in this grand project that it seems Mr Corbyn and others are embarking on with the Labour party to truly delegate decision making, policy making, to the grassroots?  Not those that have been elected but those who elected them.

STEWART HOSIE: Well let’s see what that actually means.  Is he really going to open up every single decision making to his entire party, is he going to continue to do it the way the SNP do it properly at annual conference when decisions are taking in the full glare of publicity or will it be some cobbled together as yet undefined mechanism?  At the end of the day how a party makes its policy is almost irrelevant, it’s what the policy ends up being that counts and we knew full well at the election we stood on an anti-austerity ticket, we knew what that meant, we spelled it out, it was costed.  Labour backed the Tories earlier this year in terms of 30 billion of more cuts and all the evidence from this week is that they will continue to back the budget for charter responsibility which the Chancellor is suggesting means running a surplus budget, cutting even more deeply than they need to in order to run a balanced economy.  Now that makes no sense whoever decides these things.  

DM: Well you know that the Shadow Chancellor, Mr McDonnell, is talking about dealing with the deficit and ultimately the SNP want to deal with the deficit I know as well but in a different way, through pro-growth policies.  You mentioned there standing on an anti-austerity ticket, well that’s what Labour presumably, well definitely is now, it’s pro-growth, it’s anti-Trident certainly hearing from Jeremy Corbyn.  The only thing that your parties seem to differ on substantially is of course the national question.  

STEWART HOSIE: Well that’s certainly something which we do differ on, the Scottish National Party believes in Scottish Independence, that’s our reason for existing in many ways.  I think the issue though is do the Labour party leadership in London yet understand what drives the passions for political change in Scotland and I suspect they don’t because many of the lines that Mr Corbyn used in his interview on the television this morning were the same old lines we have heard for years and I’m just not sure that they really get Scotland yet in the way that they really ought to.  

DM: But isn’t there a commonality when it comes to people’s everyday lives, a commonality within the United Kingdom about what concerns people and some of the more basic needs rather than the grand questions many years in the future. I listened to Jeremy Corbyn’s interview and he seemed to very much address those.

STEWART HOSIE: I think there are commonalities, I think people at the bottom who are struggling, people who are suffering because of the way the Tory austerity programme has been delivered, the cut to tax credits and the wealthier changes, I think for people like that there are very much problems in common but there is a big difference.  In Scotland 56 out of 59 MPs are SNP on an anti-austerity ticket, in England the people voted for what is a pretty right wing Conservative government so while there is a commonality of interests for many people, certainly the two nations are poles apart in the way they elect their leading politicians.  

DM: Well we know how sophisticated the Scottish electorate are and have become, they follow that analysis and they say who’s going to form, given that there isn’t going to be another independence referendum – and we’ll touch on that in a moment or two – for the foreseeable future, we have to deal with the government that is in Westminster.  Now who is going to form that government, it is either going to be Conservative led or Labour led, they could go back to Labour in Scotland.  

STEWART HOSIE: Well that was the argument before the 2015 election and we were very clear we can’t work with the Conservatives but we certainly could have done a deal with Ed Miliband and indeed we could potentially at some point in the future do a deal with Mr Corbyn but it  has got to be the right deal.  We don’t just have a leader, a Labour leader saying no to Trident, we also have a Labour party and a Shadow Defence Secretary who says no to Trident as well.  We don’t just have a Labour leader who says no to austerity, we actually have a Labour party that doesn’t sign up to the Tories spending cuts but actually is committed to a real terms increase in public expenditure, the real way to actually end austerity.  Now this is years into the future, we’ve got the election in 2016 to come first and I think the credibility of Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish government compared to the shambles of the Labour party in Scotland will be night and day when people come to choose next spring.  

DM: So in terms of the night and day cooperation between your parties, if Mr Corbyn carries the party, if he has the will to do that on Trident, things could become much closer?

STEWART HOSIE: Well I’m not necessarily sure that’s the case.  I certainly think it is true there could be a progressive alliance on these key issues, absolutely but our objectives are not the same and time will tell whether Mr Corbyn can actually bring his party with him anywhere close to the things he has believed for many years.

DM: Did we get a sense, I wanted to ask you about where we stand with another referendum on independence, we hear there is going to be some allusion to it at the very least in the manifesto for the 2016 elections but Nicola Sturgeon just saying recently that there are no shortcuts.

STEWART HOSIE: That’s absolutely right and indeed I think I’ve said this on your show in the past, we can’t create a circumstance to have another referendum.  The public in Scotland will determine if there is to be one.  Now we will certainly lay out the kind of things which could trigger a second referendum and we are certainly seeing lots of the actions of the UK government which are driving people who previously voted no to begin to say, hold on a minute, we think independence perhaps would be a good idea.  But Nicola is right, there are no shortcuts and it isn’t good enough simply for us to seek a mandate and hold a second referendum.  If we hold a second one we have to win it so the time has to be right, the conditions have to be right and enough people who previously said no have got to change their minds and say not only do we want a referendum but we’re going to vote yes and deliver Scottish independence.

DM: Okay, we appreciate your time Mr Hosie, thank you very much indeed.  Stewart Hosie there joining us from Dundee.