Scottish politics is in a state of flux. Labour’s domination here is well and truly over. And few socialists in Scotland will shed a tear at that. The SNP now has more MSPs, MPs and members than all the other parties put together.

Labour’s demise represents progress of a kind. It has long been a socially conservative and politically reactionary force in Scotland, having abandoned any socialist pretensions it may once have shared with James Keir Hardie long ago.

The 2015 general election told us a great deal about Scotland — Labour was comprehensively defeated because they offered an economic model and social policy agenda far too similar to the Tories.

However, this Labour offer was not entirely new — after all Scotland stayed loyal to Labour during the Blair-Brown years, through privatisation and the Iraq war, so what happened in May?

The roots of Labour’s wipeout are not hard to find.

At the centre was its performance during the independence referendum, which saw a mass street-level campaign take the Yes demand into working-class communities with hundreds of meetings, huge conferences and, crucially, the linking of independence to a vision of a progressive Scotland.

Standing against that movement, Labour joined the flexible Lib Dems and the detested Tories with a message of fear, smear and defence of cuts, Trident and the right-wing priorities of the City of London.

The fear campaign won the battle last September but lost the war to an alternative vision of a peaceful, socially just, independent Scotland and it was that vision that swept all before it last month.

Despite the SNP’s “Standing up for Scotland” general election slogan the unanswered question was: “Which Scotland do you mean?”

Is it the Scotland of the Stagecoach billionaire Brian Souter — who donates millions to the SNP — or the Scotland of “the schemes”?

Is it the Duke of Buccleuch’s Scotland — our biggest landowner — or those living on Duke Street in Glasgow’s poverty stricken East End?

The 2015 general election here was much like the 1997 one and I remember that election as if it were yesterday.

The Scottish Socialist Alliance — as we were then — stood against Blair’s New Labour because we could see what was on the way. But it was a tough election to fight because people didn’t want to hear any criticisms of Labour. It was all about getting rid of the Tories.

That was apparently all that mattered. “Things could only get better.” They didn’t.

In 2015 the Scottish working class didn’t want to hear any criticism of the SNP, intent as it was on getting rid of the “Red Tories.”

Yet the illusions in the SNP are every bit as profound as they were with Tony Blair.

Nicola Sturgeon made it abundantly clear again last month in outlining the SNP’s “business pledge” that she wants the SNP “government and business to work together in a shared national endeavour.”

Ironically, given the deep-seated tribal enmity that exists between the two parties, the SNP is very like Labour.

“Neoliberalism with a heart” is how prominent Scots economists Jim and Margaret Cuthbert of Stirling University describe them politically. The “heart” signifying their sometimes left-of-centre social policies.

Both parties calculate this neoliberalism, married to some social democracy, is where the “political centre of gravity” lies in Scotland at the moment.

And this dichotomy explains why the SNP is a mass of contradictions. None more so than its dubious claims to be “anti-austerity.”

“We are against austerity,” said Sturgeon throughout the general election before crucially qualifying her position: “On this scale and on this timescale.”

Such a statement is of course not an anti-austerity pledge at all. That’s because the SNP practises austerity — every SNP-led council in Scotland has made cuts to public services for years.

And this is not the only ground upon which the SNP opens itself up to charges of hypocrisy.

Sturgeon promises to “protect our NHS from Tory attacks” and yet she privatised Edinburgh’s Sick Children’s Hospital using the SNP’s PFI-lite Scottish Futures Trust.

She is outspoken against Trident nuclear weapons but backs Nato. She supports extending democracy and equality yet supports the monarchy with its divine right of kings and inherited privilege. The list goes on and on.

The pro-market stance of the SNP and the near total collapse of Labour creates the basis and space for a fighting pro-independence left, which will take the anti-austerity message to events such as the STUC’s Scotland United against Austerity march while building a progressive alliance for next year’s Scottish Parliament elections.

Such a formation can harness the energy of the Yes movement and offer a real socialist alternative to those thousands of left voters currently backing the SNP.

That is why the Scottish Socialist Party’s recent annual conference voted to initiate talks with other socialists about a united left alliance for the 2016 Holyrood elections. Our decision is based on a number of considerations, not least the need to maximise our chances of regaining seats at Holyrood for socialist voices.

The Scottish Left Project will finalise a common programme and democratic structures over the next few weeks. But the programme will be authentically anti-austerity. It will be proudly socialist, pro-independence and pro-trade union. It will advocate a £10-per-hour living wage and ending zero-hours contracts with enhanced democracy and greater workers’ rights.

It will be committed to a republic, with its elected MSPs pledging to live on a worker’s wages.

There is much work to be done in turning the huge potential support for this new left alliance into reality, but we believe the initiative will bear fruit and be warmly welcomed. Jim Sillars, the former deputy leader of the SNP, welcomed the news and told the Sunday Times: “This is a highly significant decision by the SSP getting what I call the electable left together is something to be welcomed” — many other voices from across the left concur.

Above all this new united left alliance will be built on the massed ranks of the Scottish working class in their workplaces, schemes and colleges.

And it will be led by a collective of experienced and able leaders, not deeply flawed “charismatic” characters like those who derailed previous left formations here.

• Colin Fox is Scottish Socialist Party co-spokesperson.