The first draft of Jeremy Corbyn's remarks on the subject of Scotland in his address to the Labour Party Conference 2015

"Comrades

"The people have spoken. I have been elected with an unprecedented mandate to bring change to our party and to our country. Today offers us an historic opportunity to set aside the past and debate the new course that will lead us to a brighter future.

"I stand before you on this podium having been propelled here by the votes of 251,417 members, supporters and affiliates. But let us not forget another people have spoken. The people of Scotland have rejected us.

"It would be easy for me to stand here and patronise the Scots for the supreme folly of abandoning our party. It would be easy for me to castigate the SNP administration in Edinburgh with a series of casual and cynical inaccuracies and misrepresentations. It would be easy for me to cast them in a variety of villainous roles, caricatures that originate only in our own imagination. I am confident I would reap the applause of those whose tribal animosities are confirmed by my doing so.

"But we have an historic opportunity for change. We have a window of opportunity. We must seize that opportunity, take our chances, before that window closes once more for a generation. We must open up to those who now sit to the left of us on the green benches, and who have occupied a position to the left of us ideologically for some time now.

"We must be humble. If we want to lead in Scotland, we must learn to follow. Mobilisation of a formidable grass roots movement in England gives us no right to usurp the movement that already exists in Scotland. We must kick the habit of complacency and condescension and entitlement for which we have been punished repeatedly at the ballot box in Scotland.

"Keir Hardie did not found this party only for it to be used by the British State to manage communities ravaged by inter-generational post-imperial decline with empty rhetoric and broken promises. But in Scotland that is what we have become. We offer beads and blankets to the natives while feathering our own nests.

"Keir Hardie spoke of 'Home Rule' for Scotland, yet we took that phrase and twisted and perverted it to form the basis of the 'Vow' with which we conned  the people of Scotland into thinking a No vote was a vote for change in the Independence referendum last year. We must offer our confession in all humility, we must admit to ourselves and to the people of Scotland that we stood on the wrong side during that campaign, and in doing so revealed what we have been doing for generations: the dirty work of the British State.

"So let there be no talk of 'winning back' Scotland, as though it were a possession of which we have been temporarily deprived. Let there be no talk of voters 'coming home' to Labour, as though they were errant children unable to decide things for themselves. If we want to move on from the disasters that have befallen us in Scotland we must first acknowledge and take responsibility for those faults that led to them.

"We do not own the opposition benches. I cannot rely on the mandate given to me by the voters while ignoring the mandate given to those with whom we share those benches. Let us not act as though we hold a monopoly on ideas, as though we are the doorman at the 'anti-austerity' club, as though we have unique and privileged access to some oracle that describes how to achieve social justice. Where we find common cause let us make concerted effort.  Let us not quibble over credentials then fail to act. Let us oppose, not abstain.

"Let us rid this land of the obscenity of Trident. Let us topple the grotesque totems and confound the deceitful shibboleths of the warmongers. Let us turn away the arms dealers from our shores and welcome the refugees that flee their guns. 

"I will work with, not against, the SNP, who provide the 56 members with whom we share the green benches, to achieve this. And I recognise the sovereign right of the people of Scotland who elected them to decide for themselves their best form of government."

(History records that this first draft was discarded and in the final draft the leader's position reverted to the one adopted by previous leaders with respect to the question of what to do about Scotland)