Optional identity mark sock puppets

I’m a bit late with this blog piece because I had a physiotherapy appointment on Friday and then we had friends from London staying over for the weekend. But things are back on track now.

Last week Keir Starmer was in Scotland to insist that Labour is “the change that Scotland needs,” that change apparently being Labour controlled North Lanarkshire Council closing down a swathe of public services and Starmer’s wholesale adoption of Conservative party policies. So the “change” that Scotland needs is apparently things staying exactly the same as they are just now except without the threat of a Scottish independence referendum to force the Westminster Government to pay attention to what Scotland actually wants – as expressed by the people of Scotland through the ballot box – instead of Starmer and his cabinet lecturing us about what Scotland’s priorities “really” are, priorities which entirely uncoincidentally happen to conform precisely with Starmer’s brand of centre right politics all wrapped up in a British flag. But he’s not a nationalist you know, oh no, not at all. Starmer can’t be a nationalist, because he’s British.

During a press conference, Starmer blew the gaff on the real status of Labour’s Scottish Optional Identity Mark, which he still pretends is a distinct political entity with policies and a self governing identity of its own, an assertion which has as much substance as Starmer’s claim that the supposedly United Kingdom is a voluntary union even as he refuses to say what the democratic route to another Scottish independence referendum might actually be.

Starmer made it abundantly clear that the Labour party’s Scottish Optional Identity Mark is really just his sock puppet and that the Labour party in Scotland has no room for divergence on those issues which Westminster has deemed not to be devolved matters. In those crucial topics, which include the great majority of social security and taxation policies as well as energy policy and the crucial subjects of Scotland’s constitutional relationship to the rest of the UK and the powers of the Scottish Parliament, it’s Starmer who will make the decisions and the representatives of the Optional Identity Mark will be obliged to follow meekly along in Starmer’s wake.

During a press conference in Scotland on Friday, Starmer was questioned about the issue of another independence referendum and imperiously replied that on matters related to the Scottish constitutional debate, “Whatever I say will be what Anas says.” He quickly added that he and Optional Identity Mark branch manager Anas Sarwar would speak “as a team,” “so it doesn’t really matter which of us says it.”

However Starmer left no doubt at all about who in that “team” was the one who makes the decisions, and it’s certainly not Anas Sarwar or any mythical entity touted by the media as the “Scottish Labour party.” Anas Sarwar is merely Keir Starmer’s sock puppet. Starmer makes the decisions and the sock puppets of the Optional Identity Mark have no option but to follow along obediently, pretending that they have a power and influence that they don’t come close to possessing.

Vote Labour, vote sock puppet. A more accurate slogan for the Labour party in Scotland would be “The sock puppet Scotland doesn’t need.” Because Labour is not going to deliver anything remotely close to meaningful change.

What Labour most certainly will not do is to give the Scottish Parliament any more powers which would enable it to protect Scotland from a future Conservative government hell bent on undermining the devolution settlement even more than the current one has done already. Neither will a Starmer government introduce any measures to bring about much needed reform of the deeply dysfunctional Westminster Parliament. He’s not going to abolish the offence to democracy that is the house of Lords because Starmer wants to make full use of the power of patronage that appointing new peers will give him as Prime Minister.

Neither will Starmer introduce a proportional voting system because his Labour party is as much in thrall as the Conservatives to the prospect of near absolute power won on a minority of votes cast that the current system offers the largest parties in British politics.

Even if Labour wins the next Westminster general election, eventually the Conservatives will be back in charge again, by which time they will be even more authoritarian, anti-democratic and extreme right wing Anglo-British nationalists than they currently are. Starmer’s Labour party will have ensured that Scotland is fully exposed to the cruel and icy blasts of that government.

Starmer’s Labour party has adopted a slew of Conservative policies already, and it’s still in opposition, if prior experience is anything to go by it will be even more right wing once it gets into power. Tony Blair promised all sorts of social democratic policies when in opposition then once in office became a right wing privatising government, enthusiastically participating in American Republican party warmongering and saddling the public sector with ruinously expensive Private Finance Initiatives which the public are still paying through ther nose for decades later. Starmer’s Labour party offers only Blairism on steroids, Starmer has purged Labour of the left wing which was still influential during Blair’s time in office.

The sock puppets of the Labour party’s Scottish Optional Identity Mark have nothing to offer Scotland except delusions and deceit and the short term satisfaction of booting out Sunak and his cronies at the expense of keeping most Conservative policies intact and leaving Scotland powerless to resist the depredations of the future Conservative government which will inevitably return, by which time the Tories will be even more extreme right wing authoritarian English nationalists than they are at the moment.

Voting for Labour in order to get rid of the Tories is like signing up for a burglar protection scheme the cost of which is Labour taking its pick of all your possessions that a Tory burglar might make off with and then after a period of five years removing your front door so that your house is left wide open to Tory burglars in the future.

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