There is no end to the duplicity of Labour's Scottish branch manager Anas Sarwar.
During the Westminster general election campaign he patronisingly intoned "read my lips no austerity under Labour" when it was put to him that there was a multi-billion black hole in public finances that the Labour party was pretending wasn't there. Of course the black hole was there, and it's even worse than many had predicted, even though Labour had accused those warning of the shortfall of scaremongering.
The £22bn black hole led the Labour party to refuse to lift the abhorrent two child cap on benefits which has been described as a mechanism for the production of child poverty. In her first financial statement Chancellor Rachel Reeves axed the universal entitlement to the winter fuel payment for all pensioners, restricting it instead to those in receipt of means tested benefits.
This decision, which was taken without consultation with the Scottish Government, had the result of an immediate cut of £160 million in Barnett consequentials to the Scottish budget as the equivalent benefit in Scotland is devolved. This left the Scottish Government, which does not have the same tax and borrowing powers available to Reeves, with no choice but to follow the lead of the Labour government and restrict the Scottish benefit to pensioners in receipt of means tested benefits as well.
Anas Sarwar is, unsurprisingly, refusing to take any responsibility for the decision of his bosses in Westminster to follow Tory fiscal rules and to take an axe to funding for benefits and public services which the vulnerable depend on.
The cuts in Scotland, according to the fantasy politics of Anas Sarwar, are 'not related' to UK Government cuts to the Scottish block grant. Apparently when it's a Labour government which slashes the funding received by the Scottish Government, this magically has no effect on the money available to to spend on services or benefits in Scotland.
In a confused interview Sarwar insisted: “But the cuts that are happening in Scotland are not related to the £22bn black hole that Rachel Reeves set out in her statement."
He went on to say that he doesn't believe the payment should be universal and claimed that it's the fault of the Scottish Government for implementing something that he says he supports.
In 2022, Sarwar attacked the withdrawal of a £100 heating allowance for over 80s by Glasgow Council claiming it would cost lives. How many lives will be lost after Labour's winter fuel payment cut? Flailing about much?
Yet despite the cuts, his government has found £150 million to give to Ian Murray so that his Colonial Office can pretend to be useful. That money would cover the cost of the winter fuel payment. Does Sarwar support giving the cash to Ian Murray? Don't expect either of them to face a rigorous grilling on BBC Scotland. Sarwar is clearly powerless to stand up to yet more austerity and cuts to benefits and public services. So much for "Scottish Labour" influencing policy.
Anas Sarwar's intelligence insulting nonsense is the logical conclusion of a politician who can say whatever he likes, safe in the knowledge that he'll get a free pass from a Scottish media which for the most part sees its job as being to fend off support for independence and consequently only holds power to account when that power is wielded by the SNP.
Sarwar is the current holder of the title Saviour of the Union, and as such most of the Scottish media indulges and enables his counterfactual imaginings and presents them as facts which are not to be challenged.
This Labour government has made an ideological decision to cut services and spending instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share. If he ever becomes First Minister Anas Sarwar would only assist Starmer in making more cuts and would just roll over, turning Holyrood into Starmer's obedient poodle.
During a press conference on Tuesday morning, Keir Starmer warned that Labour's first budget, due to be unveiled by the Chancellor in October, will be "painful." For all that Labour, and especially Anas Sarwar, have insisted that there will be no return to austerity under Starmer's government, the language about a "painful budget" and "difficult choices" is alarmingly similar to that used by David Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne in 2010 when they ushered in the Tory austerity which devastated public services and led to the gap between rich and poor widening into a yawning chasm.
Yet Starmer still cannot say that one word that more than any other single reason lies behind that £22bn black hole, lost tax receipts, lost trade, lost VAT - Brexit.
Starmer has warned that things will get worse before they get better. However millions of people are already living on the edge, the anti-poverty pressure group the Joseph Rowntree foundation warned in 2023 that 3.8 million people had experienced destitution in 2022, a number that will only have grown in the two years since. Destitution is defined as being unable to meet basic physical needs, being unable to stay fed, clean, warm, and dry. Those who already experience destitution have no slack left to give, things getting worse for them means, to put it in the starkest terms, that people will die.
If Starmer is at all serious about “rooting out 14 years of Tory rot”, it will take a great deal more than new management applying Tory fiscal policies. A new mindset is required too, but there is precious little sign of that from Keir Starmer. The last thing we need is more austerity and the continuation of the hard Brexit bequeathed by Boris Johnson and the stench of cash for access, giving a big Labour donor a security pass to Number 10. So far it's looking like Tory rot will be replaced by Labour rot.
Starmer said wealth creation is a priority for his government. But he cut the Winter Fuel Allowance for vulnerable pensioners and to vote against lifting the two child cap on benefits while refusing to raise taxes on the super-rich. The question then is - who is Starmer trying to create wealth for?
