Starmer’s greatest betrayal, pandering to the far right

This weekend sees the Labour party’s Scottish conference in Glasgow, when it was planned, it was going to be a triumphal occasion when Labour gloated about the destruction of the SNP, Labour’s impending return to power in Holyrood with Anas Sarwar as the next First Minister, and the final putting to bed of the independence question which has defined Scottish politics for a decade and a half.

But to paraphrase the immortal bard, the best laid plans of mice and muppets aft gang agley. This conference is not going to be a triumphal celebration, it’s going to be a wake.

Labour goes into this conference with its polling ratings in free fall amidst growing public anger over the many betrayals that Keir Starmer has managed to squeeze into his short time in office. It’s quite an achievement to anger so many people and break so many promises in such a short space of time. It’s Starmer’s political superpower. Just this week alone we have had the announcement of the cancellation of the £5 million in so-called levelling up funds promised by the previous Conservative government to Dunfermline and an additional £5 million promised to Perth and Kinross. The betrayals are coming thick and fast, but this being Labour’s political strategising, mostly thick. It’s almost as though Starmer has set out to deliberately alienate as many as possible of the voters who backed his party at the last Westminster general election.

Just this week Anas Sarwar declared that he was confident that he’d be First Minister following the next Scottish elections due in May next year. A few months ago that would have sounded plausibly self-assured. Now it just sounds delusional.

Labour’s betrayals are par for the course. No one in Scotland who remembers the infamous Vow and the aftermath of the 2014 independence referendum should be remotely surprised that yet again the Labour party has betrayed all the promises it made in order to secure votes. The Labour party, and above all the Labour party in Scotland, is the alcoholic begging for cash for another drink, promising to change after they’ve downed that one more bottle of single malt whose definition Labour has just changed in order to benefit English whisky producers of ‘Engtch whisky’.

Labour’s Scottish conference is being marked by a demonstration by trades unions representing the Grangemouth workers who were sold out by

All that is entirely unsurprising and sadly predictable, but what is unforgivable are the attempts being made by Labour to ape and to pander to the agenda of the hard right. The Labour party was historically supposed to be the bulwark standing up for the interests of working class communities against fascism and the politics of scapegoating minorities employed by the far right in order to deflect attention from the real cause of the problems and difficulties which beset the poor, the elderly, and the disabled.

However under Starmer Labour has set out to appease and placate the far-right instead of standing up to it. That is Starmer’s greatest betrayal of all.

Just this week we have seen Starmer’s Scottish mini-me kowtow to his boss on the reversal of Labour in Scotland’s previous support for the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform bill, vetoed by the Tory Viceroy Alister Jack, and adding the LGBT+ community to the list of betrayed groups. Labour in Scotland has also U-turned on its previous opposition to the UK Internal Market Act introduced by the Conservatives, an act which Sarwar himself had spoken out against and which the Labour led government in Wales opposes. The Act has been criticised for running a coach and horses through the devolution settlement and giving the Westminster government the legal authority to intervene directly in devolved matters.

But traducing the devolution settlement is apparently just fine with Anas Sarwar when it’s Keir Starmer and his lackeys who are doing the traducing. The U-turn, not coincidentally, plays well with the über-Unionists of Reform UK whom Sarwar is attempting to court. Sarwar has refused to rule out accepting the support of any Reform UK MSPs who might be returned to Holyrood. Reform continues to be bigged up by the British media even though the Scottish policies of the hard right English nationalist party consist of a blank sheet of paper and a smirk from Nigel Farage.

In his latest Farage appeasing gesture, unveiled as the Labour conference got underway in Glasgow, Sarwar has announced that he plans to copy Elon Musk and set up a “Musk style Department of Government Efficiency tasked with finding ways to slash the Scottish Government’s spending even more than it has already been squeezed by fifteen years of Tory austerity and there are precious few “efficiencies” left to find. It’s spending cuts and austerity whatever way you look at it. The Scottish Tories announced similar plans earlier in the week. Labour and the Tories, twa cheeks o the same Farage enabling airse.

In making the announcement he also aped the scaremongering and nasty language of the hard right by condemning the forecast budget for a replacement to Glasgow’s Victorian era Barlinnie prison, saying that the SNP think the forecast £1 billion cost is “value for money for murderers and rapists.” Well that’s not vile hyperbole at all. The majority of those imprisoned are there for non-violent offences. Scotland has one of the highest incarceration rates in Europe, with prison populations being boosted by the tabloid pleasing rhetoric of politicians pledging to get tougher on crime and portraying non-custodial sentences for non-violent crimes as being “soft” and allowing offenders to get away with their crimes.

Linking proposals to slash government spending and introduce a new era of austerity to being tough on murderers and rapists is the tactic of a demagogue. What’s next for Sarwar as he copies the policies, language and tactics of the Anglo-British nationalist right. Will he be “throwing out his heart” Musk style to delegates at the Labour conference. At this point you couldn’t rule it out.

It all translates into more votes for the SNP and the Scottish Greens next year. Sarwar and Starmer’s short term stupidity is the SNP’s opportunity.

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