Labour to merge with the Tories when?
Or: Labour: Not much of an alternative.
The difference is that Labour tends to (caveats apply!) want to solve the issue by getting more people working, not just blocking those 'undesirables' who could work and hoping for the best despite not making up the numbers in any meaningful way. In fact, discouraging the existing workforce and driving them to quit.
Short-termism strikes both (all!) parties, but it seems that we're seeing so much kneejerk populism (and not even carried through properly) from the Tories that while it appears they have enough functional backbone to support L2-4 reflexes, they're clearly missing whole thoracic segments that should have made their higher centres aware of the repeated pattellic concussions going on.
It's slightly unfair, of course, as only the Tories are in a position to do (or not do... "...there is no try!") anything in (undevolved areas of) government. Labour can hope that it can snipe tactically enough to either scare them into going the positive way they want or else to run blindly off a cliff (hopefully without keeping hold of the rope by which they're dragging the rest of us) and then step in. ((Unfortunately, these strategies can be mutually exclusive, or certainly hard to mesh together at the same time, and fans of either see any attempt to do the other to be a cop-out).
Devolved-wise, where the MSPs, AMs and (when they're capabable of playing nice with each other!) MLAs have any say, they are perhaps trying the alternative. Sometimes hamstrung by having one hand being tied behind their back (with a confusingly mixed medical-metaphor!), sometimes not competently enacted... But it's more than Kier can do, currently. Whatever he says must be calculated (correctly or not) only for how it changes other people's minds, whereas if there's any serious thinking in the other quarter(s) with actual hands on the levers of power then you'd hope that it was an actual attempt (however misguided) to operate the machine of state for the better, or at least not an actual attempt to make it shake apart under the strain.
It's a pity that the SNP and Labour have directions of travel that are slightly too divergent to be considered the same direction. Actually, it's a pity that grassroots support/opposition dwells so much on the non-social aspects of their politics (either as part of their raison d'etre or as an uncomfortable counter-factuality to the 'true spirit' of the respective cause, depending upon who is talking about who). But that's part of the problem with lumping sort-of-allies together into parties ("Labour And Co-operative", "Conservative And Unionist") or being effectively formed around a single hot-topic issue. But don't ask me how I'd reliably stop that.
...excuse me, I'm drifting into a flight of fancy (snipped some paragraphs, perhaps should have snipped some of that immediately above). And none of this is intended as apologisim/excoriation, though you can tell I remain unhappy with a certain party and would be interested to see almost anything
other than them at the topmost level. I mean, it's not as if we're guaranteed stability as it is, so I'm uncharacteristically a little enamoured of the idea of just flipping the card table over and seeing what cards get dealt when the mess is cleared up and entirely new hands are put in front of us. Even if it's a completely new game that I barely know the rules of.