Starmer continues the Tory war on devolution

The Labour party isn’t even pretending to respect the devolution settlement now. Labour’s idea of Scottish devolution is that they’ll support it as long as Scotland votes for a Labour controlled Scottish Government. It’s the do as we say because you can’t be trusted school of British nationalist paternalism. It’s not for a government in Westminster to second guess the democratic choices of the people of Scotland at a Holyrood election, but that is exactly what the deeply undemocratic Keir Starmer is doing. When the devolved Scottish Parliament was established in the late 1990s, Labour genuinely thought Scotland would be Labour’s plaything and powerbase forever. The voting system imposed on Holyrood was supposed to produce a Labour Lib Dem Scottish Government in perpetuity – or rather a ‘Scottish executive’ because we can’t have Scotland getting ideas above its station now can we?

Things did not go to plan and since 2011, the Labour party has been sulking like a spoiled child whose toy has been taken away as a punishment for bad behaviour. They still believe Scotland is rightfully theirs.

Following a disastrous start to his new government – even Tony Blair managed to get through the first couple of years without making more than half the country hate him, on Thursday Keir Starmer set out a re-set for his government in a vain attempt to pretend that the past five months hadn’t happened. In a speech Starmer laid six new “milestones” which set out targets for his government to achieve over the next five years. These supersede his previous promises, most of which are now lying dead beside the political highway, having collided with Starmer’s opportunistic dishonesty.

The new “milestones”, which he really means this time, honest, are: higher disposable income per person; 1.5 million new homes in England; 92% of patients in England waiting 18 weeks or less for elective treatment ; 13,000 new police officers; getting 75% of five-year-olds in England “ready to learn” when they start school and 95% clean power by 2030, much of which will be produced by Scotland.

It’s high time that the Scottish Government and pro-independence politicians started screaming from the rooftops about Westminster’s theft of Scotland’s renewable energy, it’s the cheviot, the stag, and the tall tall wind turbine. Scotland produces more energy than it needs for its own consumption yet Scottish households pay some of the highest energy bills in Europe. All that electricity is produced by natural resources which are the communal property of the people of Scotland, yet the profits from it flow south along with the electricity itself.

Notably missing from Starmer’s list is any mention of tackling child poverty, wealth inequality, or social exclusion. The pledge to achieve 95% clean power by 2030 has watered-down a manifesto commitment from Labour to achieve “zero carbon” electricity by that year. Starmer insists that the new commitment is exactly the same as it previously was, forgetting perhaps that we can read too. But the shameless rewriting of past statements is very much on brand for Starmer. His claim that he never said Israel has the right to withhold food and water from Gaza springs to mind. He was literally recorded saying it.

There was little mention of Scotland, so much for the promise that Scotland would be at the centre of a Labour government’s decision making. However in a press release issued after the speech, Downing Street wrote: “The message is clear – devolved or not [italics in original] – we will collectively make a difference across the UK sharing best practice and aligning efforts across every level of government, business and with civil society.”

Labour mentioned policing, health, and “giving children the best start in life” as specific areas in which they would work in Scotland, given that these are devolved but also fall under Starmer’s new list of “milestones”.

The UK Government said that its pledge to work in devolved areas was part of a “genuine partnership with devolved governments on shared priorities of working people”. By genuine partnership what they mean is they tell the Scottish Government what to do in devolved matters and will deploy the levers made available to them in the Scotland Act in order to ensure that Starmer gets his way. All this is of course perfectly legal, legality is what Westminster says it is. Westminster doesn’t do co-operation or partnership, that is alien to the DNA of a body which sees itself as the sole possessor of unlimited sovereignty. In its dealing with other elected bodies Westminster is strictly a top-down institution, it gives instructions which are meant to be obeyed.

Labour is citing its victory in Scotland at this year’s Westminster general election as giving it a mandate to overrule the Scottish Government even though “trashing the devolution settlement” wasn’t mentioned by Labour either in its Scottish manifesto or at any point during the election campaign. This is the same Labour party which denied that the Scottish Government had a mandate to hold another independence referendum following a decisive victory by pro-independence parties who had prominent manifesto commitments to holding another independence referendum in a Scottish parliamentary election campaign which was dominated by the issue of a second independence referendum. For the Labour party the definition of mandate is “whatever suits the Labour party.”

The lesson ought to be clear by now. If you vote Labour in Scotland you are giving Keir Starmer licence to do whatever he likes. His interest in you and your needs ends the moment you mark an X beside the name of the Labour candidate and drop your ballot in the box.

Faced with this blatant contempt for the devolution settlement, it’s not enough for the Scottish Government to complain about the Labour party acting undemocratically. Labour knows it’s acting undemocratically and it doesn’t care now any more than it cared in the aftermath of losing the 2021 Holyrood election. Labour knows that it won’t be taken to task by the media in Scotland, it will be enabled and platformed. It’s time for some constructive obstruction. It’s time to seize the initiative.

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