Sarwar’s U turn is not what it seems

When is a promise not a promise? When it’s a promise made by the Labour party in Scotland. Then it’s not a promise, it’s a lie. Right now on BBC Scotland there’s a programme about exposing scammers who call people making fake promises and end up ripping them off. It would be nice if BBC Scotland invested even half as much energy into investigating the scam promises made by the Labour party in Scotland when it’s in search of votes.

You’d think that people in Scotland would have wised up by now, but then when you’ve got BBC Scotland and the Daily Record pumping out uncritical Labour puff pieces while the rest of the Scottish media obsessively drools over every sin, imagined or otherwise, committed by the SNP, the only party in Scotland which has to be held to account apparently.

In the face of growing and persistent criticism from civic Scotland, and hostility on the doorsteps, the Labour party in Scotland has announced that a future Labour led Scottish government will “reinstate the winter fuel payment.” This announcement has got nothing to do with Sarwar and his cronies having a sincere change of heart when confronted by the realisation that the policy is immoral, wrong, and dangerous, and it has nothing to do with the damage that the cut is doing to low income pensioners living in the coldest country in the UK and everything to do with the damage that it’s doing to the electoral prospects of the Labour party in Scotland and nepo baby Anas Sarwar’s chances of sneering his way into Bute House.

The announcement comes a couple of days ahead of three council by-elections in Glasgow. On Thursday, Labour will be defending three council seats after their newly elected MPs resigned from the local authority and went to Westminster to vote to axe the payment.

Even for Anas Sarwar this is risible stuff, his party took money from pensioners and let them freeze, now he promises to give some of it back if they vote Labour. For sheer brass neck and shameful behaviour, this is a new low.

But as always with a promise from the Labour party in Scotland, all is not what it seems at first glance. A promise to “reinstate the winter fuel payment” looks very like a promise to retore the full payment to everyone who has lost it, and in fact that’s exactly what Sarwar is saying if words are to be taken in their commonly accepted sense. But if you look at the details of what is being proposed, that is not at all what is on the table. We’re dealing with “Scottish Labour opposes the two child cap” or “no austerity under Labour” levels of deception here. It’s the same old con that Labour has played on the people of Scotland for generations, and a new generation is finding out why so many of us turned against the Labour party years ago. Labour in Scotland has learned nothing at all from its period in the electoral wilderness. So much for the reviews and the earnest promises to reflect and to learn. Those promises meant as much as every other promise made by the Labour party in Scotland. Labour couldn’t be trusted then, it can’t be trusted now.

If pensioners could use Labour gaslighting to keep themselves warm, there would be no need for a winter fuel allowance. Despite what he promised, Sarwar has no plan to “reinstate the winter fuel payment.” That implies the restoration of the flat rate universal payment to pensioners which Rachel Reeves axed and which the Scottish Government was forced to copy due to the sudden and unexpected loss of the £160 million in Barnett Consequentials which funded the payment in Scotland. The Treasury gave the Scottish Government just 90 minutes notice of the funding cut, there’s that respect agenda in action.

But what the branch manager is actually promising is something quite different, a means tested benefit, the amount of which is dependent on the claimant’s income. That is definitely not the universal flat rate benefit which has been lost. The Labour party in Scotland, telling lies? Imagine that.

Sarwar’s great pitch to pensioners who are angry about the loss of the winter fuel payment is :”Vote for us, and Labour will replace the universal flat rate benefit that we axed with something much worse.”

Means tested benefits have considerably higher administration costs than flat rate benefits which are automatically paid to everyone who is eligible. They also have lower take up rates and not everyone who is eligible to apply actually does so. The winter fuel payment now only goes to pensioners who claim the means tested benefit pension credit, but means tested benefits carry a social stigma. The low take up rate of pension credit is a case in point. Many pensioners who will be eligible for this new winter fuel payment won’t apply for it because they do not wish to go through what they see as a demeaning and intrusive application process in order to get it.

SNP Equalities Minister Kaukab Stewart was distinctly unimpressed by the Sarwar’s U turn, saying: “Is that the same Winter Fuel Payment Scottish Labour MSPs voted against reversing last month? The same one that Scottish Labour MPs voted in favour of cutting?” In October MSPs held a vote calling on the Labour government to reverse the damaging cut. Labour MSPs voted against, but now that they’re seeing it risks a damaging cut to their chances of getting votes, all of a sudden they’re having a change of heart. As always with the Labour party in Scotland it’s about what is in the best interests of the party.

SNP MSP George Adams added: “Honestly, what an absolute chancer, how about talking to your Scottish MPs that voted for it in the first place.”

But all you’ll get from your Labour MP are platitudes, and then they will go and trot through whichever voting lobby Starmer tells them to. They don’t represent you or me, they represent Keir Starmer and the corporate donors who pay thousands of pounds into Labour party coffers.

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