MOST predictions suggested that yesterday’s local elections across England would be yet another sign that Labour are heading for a significant win at the next General Election, bringing to an end 14 years of disastrous Tory rule.
This is undoubtedly good news for the UK. The last decade or so has shown the Conservative Party to be more incompetent, more unjust, more venal, more disinterested in equality and fairness and more corrupt than even its sternest critics warned in 2010.
The prospect of finally waving goodbye to Rishi Sunak and his parcel of rogues is certainly worth celebrating.
Labour may prove to be the biggest winner of the elections but it’s not all good news for the party. They are predicted to make big gains in big urban areas – but in the Home Counties and rural England, the LibDems and the Greens were expected to do very well.
So let’s keep things in perspective when we consider the possibility of a Labour revival. In any case, the election of Keir Starmer as prime minister is not going to herald a golden age of prosperity, equal opportunity and the redistribution of wealth or anything like it.
On the contrary, it will follow the long list of bitter disappointments that Labour governments have inflicted on voters. Take, for example, the bright and optimistic days which followed the election of Tony Blair – they only lead to the unjustifiable and criminal invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.
The possible election of a Labour government has in some quarters been seen as proof that independence is not essential to create the Scotland many indy supporters dream of.
Some commentators have advanced the argument that as Labour represents the only realistic option to replace the Tories at Westminster, even independence supporters would be wiser to vote Labour rather than SNP at the next General Election.
Be warned ... nothing could be further from the truth.
Those arguments mainly come from those who have never withdrawn their allegiance to Labour throughout the rise to power and consequent electoral dominance of the SNP. They see the party’s current problems as the chance to restore the “natural party of power” to their rightful place in Scotland.
There are all sorts of reasons why they will not succeed.
Here are just a few.
First, let’s take an argument put forward recently that a Labour victory at the General Election would demolish the portrayal of Scots as morally superior to the English, given that they would have elected a left-leaning government more attuned to the values Scotland has embraced at the ballot box.
Those who support this argument go on to suggest that if Scotland is therefore not significantly different from England, it does not need a significantly different government to represent its views.
For a start, no serious case is being made that the Scots are by their very nature morally superior to the English. That is arrant nonsense.
There are millions of good people in England who would support the type of socially and politically progressive government that Scots regularly place their faith in at Holyrood. It is categorically untrue that a majority of English people vote Tory.
The truth is that the 2019 General Election saw the Conservatives win the highest percentage of the popular vote in England than any party since 1970 – but even then it was 47.2%, still shy of an overall majority.
In any case, the argument for independence is not predicated upon Scots being morally superior to the English, nor that those who vote SNP are morally superior to those who vote for other parties.
It is certainly true, however, that Scotland pretty much always returns proportionately far fewer Conservative MPs than England under the first-past-the-post electoral system – in 2019, it elected six compared to 345 in England.
In fact, since 1945, Scotland has suffered six Conservative governments and one Tory/LibDem coalition government it did not vote for. Seven of the last nine UK prime ministers have been Conservatives.
These results hardly suggest that Scotland is an equal partner in the Union, as was promised to sway voters in the 2014 independence referendum. Only independence – and not a Labour victory at the next General Election – will guarantee that Scotland gets the government it votes for.
So you certainly don’t need to believe Scotland is morally superior to the English to see a democratic problem here. In a Union in which Scotland will forever be outnumbered, there is a huge risk we will be subject to Tory rule and policies which we explicitly rejected, and a Tory philosophy which is anathema to most of us.
The same is true, of course, for Labour voters in areas such as Liverpool and Manchester. But unlike those areas, Scotland is a nation and independence offers us an escape.
Remaining in an unjust Union will bring no long-term benefit to those areas – remember the exclusion of Scotland would have denied Labour a majority just twice since 1945. Escaping and creating a successful independent country would be an inspirational message to the rest of the UK celebrating what can be achieved free of Tory policies.
It’s hardly likely that a Labour government under the leadership of Starmer would be effective in any case, given his reluctance to stick to any of the policies which reflect the basic principles on which the party was founded.
Starmer will certainly not countenance any moves to bring independence closer for Scotland – or even to give us a voice to express our views on the matter.
Given his predilection for flip-flopping on promise after promise, it would be a foolish voter who would take seriously any suggestion of an extended or refreshed version of independence.
Starmer’s latest reversal of his vow to include free university tuition fees in the next Labour manifesto follows a long line of U-turns on policies many had thought were part of Labour’s DNA.
As recently as 2020, Starmer pledged during his leadership campaign to support getting rid of tuition fees. That promise proved worthless earlier this week when the Labour leader said on Radio 4 the party was “likely to move on from that commitment” because of current economic problems.
The Labour commitment to supporting workers’ industrial disputes to secure better wages and working conditions has been similarly ditched.
Last August, Starmer said Labour MPs should not join picket lines if they want to be in government. When asked if there were any circumstances where he would stand on a picket line, he said: “No. I want to be prime minister of the country. I want to see a Labour government.”
If that Labour government would refuse to introduce free university tuition fees, to support workers’ fight for better wages, to create a national energy company in the wake of the massive profits racked up by companies such as Shell – which yesterday posted record profits of £7.6 BILLION in the first three months of the year – what use would it be?
There is no doubt there was a time when the Labour Party offered a truly left-wing alternative to the greed and ruthlessness of the Tories – but with Starmer at the helm, there is no doubt that time has gone.
In February, Sir Starmer was proud to state the party had changed. He had a clear message to anyone unhappy: “If you don’t like the changes that we’ve made, I say the door is open and you can leave.”
Thousands of Scottish voters have already done exactly that during a decade which saw a party of which it was once said a monkey wearing a Labour rosette would have been elected instead reduced to a miserable rump.
Every so often, a Scottish media unaccountably reluctant to wean itself off the Labour Party despite everything pauses in its barrage of “SNP bad” to proclaim a Labour revival.
These predictions have invariably proved mistakes and they will be no more accurate today.
Scottish voters have weighed up the broken promises, the abandonment of the policies of the left, the abject failure to provide anything resembling a cohesive campaign against the worst government since Margaret Thatcher – and more have decided to stick with the SNP than take their chances with Labour.
Scotland has cut its allegiance to Labour and it won’t be going back any time soon.
