At his meeting with the mercurial American president Donald Trump, Prime Minister Keir Starmer offered the US wannabe President for Life a state visit to the UK. He also further sweetened the already saccharine deal by offering up a trip to Scotland to stay with King Charles in one of his residences in order to plan the state visit. Balmoral in Deeside or Dumfries House in Ayrshire – a property which has been annexed by Charles as one of his private residencies even though it was purchased with public money. When it comes to grifting Charles could teach Trump a think or three. Both residencies are conveniently located within sucking-up distance of one of Trump's Scottish golf courses.
Of course, I get the Realpolitik of it, but I still felt a bit dirty on hearing the news. It was nauseating and demeaning to see Scotland being offered up as a pretty bauble to placate the ego of Donald Trump. It was a stark illustration of the real place of Scotland within this so called Union. Without any say or consultation with the people of Scotland, powerful men are pimping our country out like a prostitute for the pleasure of a mafia boss from whom they seek favours. It cheapens and abases us all.
This sort of thing is what happens when a nation is trapped in an unequal Union with a larger neighbour and deprived of agency. When Trump visits we need to channel the spirit of the late Janey Godley and let Trump, the sausage-fingered king, and Keir Starmer, know what we think of them.
It's not even as though Starmer's sycophancy will do much good in the longer term. Trump has the attention span of a goldfish and there are serious questions about his cognitive decline. He did not seem able to read out the letter from the King that Starmer so obsequiously presented to him and appeared not to recall that just a couple of days previously he had called the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator. Trump will forget anything he promised Starmer just as quickly.
But if Scots are angered and disgusted by the sycophancy of Keir Starmer towards Trump, imagine how Canadians are feeling. Charles is legally Canada's head of state, but yesterday they were confronted by the spectacle of the King heaping praise and honours upon Donald Trump, a man who is trying to damage Canada's economy in pursuit of his oft-stated desire to annexe the entire country and reduce it to the status of an American state – or Scotland within the UK for that matter.
Instead of speaking out for the interests of a country which Charles counts as one of his dominions, he's far more interested in pleasuring the man who threatens Canada's very existence as an independent country. Moves to make Canada a republic have hitherto not been a powerful political force in the country, except in Quebec, but yesterday's spectacle will certainly have given it a boost.
GB Energy empty promises
The SNP have criticised the Labour Government as doubts grow over Labour's pre-election pledge to invest £8.3 billion in GB Energy, the publicly owned investment vehicle Labour is selling to us as an energy company. The promise of £8.3bn in funding formed a central plank Starmer’s commitment to voters going into the General Election last year – even so, it was a significant downgrading from the party's previous policy of spending £28bn a year on green investment, a promise which was later abandoned along with the promise to nationalise the energy companies.
However even this much lower £8.3bn figure is now in doubt after the UK Treasury declined to confirm that the UK Government was still committed to spending that amount ahead of its multi-year spending plan due in June, when asked by Bloomberg News. So far just £125 million has been committed to GB Energy. There are also questions about whether GB Energy has any employees in Aberdeen at all, as it emerged that the company is still without headquarters in the city. Labour had promised to create 1000 jobs in the city with the company but its CEO Jürgen Maiers admitted recently that it could take 20 years for the promised 1000 jobs to materialise.
Following the report by Bloomberg News, the SNP's Westminster energy spokesperson Dave Doogan MP hit out at what he called a “litany of broken promises” by Keir Starmer.
He said: "The Labour Party gave a cast iron guarantee that they'd cut energy bills by £300 yet they've spiralled since they've come to power and risen by almost £300 – no one knows what on earth GB Energy will do, but with scant funding behind it almost certainly nothing.
"If the Labour Government is serious about lowering bills and net zero then it wouldn't have a fiscal regime that is spooking investment, it wouldn't be dragging its heels on Scottish carbon capture and it would have a clear vision behind GB Energy and proper funding.”
He added: "£8bn is a far cry from the £28bn pledge the Labour Party was once committed to and let's not forget that while it may be called GB Energy, it's Scotland's natural resources.
"No one here should be living in fuel poverty which is why SNP MPs will always put Scotland's interests first and demand Scotland's energy wealth works for Scotland's people."
Aid cuts prompt resignation
In the first high-profile resignation from Keir Starmer's government, International Development Minister Anneliese Dodds has tendered her resignation from the Cabinet citing her disagreement with Starmer's decision to make swingeing cuts to the foreign aid budget in order to boost defence spending.
Born and raised in Aberdeen, Dodds represents Oxford East as an MP. In her resignation letter the MP said that the decision to almost halve foreign aid spending would bolster Russia and encourage China. Dodds said Starmer was right to increase defence spending although she had hoped it might be funded through taxation rather than through such drastic cuts to foreign aid.
