The vile, gruesome people in charge of the Labour party

Labour held its Scottish conference in Glasgow over the weekend. Naturally, it featured U-turn Sarwar and the pantomime Dame misrepresenting NHS Scotland, never mind that Labour is making a far worse job of running the NHS in Wales. Anas Sarwar is his own man, he makes his own decisions, and it’s entirely coincidental that he freely and completely of his own accord comes to the exact same decisions as his bosses in London. That’s why he’s decided all by himself that Scotland needs more nuclear energy to match the new nuclear energy plants that Labour is planning for England. It’s also why he decided entirely independently that NHS Scotland needs more private sector involvement just like Wes Streeting is planning for the NHS in England.

Sarwar has also ruled out another independence referendum even if the pro-independence parties win the next Holyrood elections, telling the BBC’s Sunday Show there would be “no independence referendum in the term of the next parliament” and that other issues should take priority, he insisted that if the SNP wins again in 2026 and a pro-independence majority returns to Holyrood, the UK Government still will not grant an independence referendum. Sarwar, and not the people of Scotland, will decide what those other issues that will take priority will be. The contempt for democracy is off the charts.

Democracy doesn’t matter to Sarwar and the Labour party. Naturally the BBC took him to task for traducing the entire concept and purpose of parliamentary democracy. Naa, of course they didn’t. The democratic will of the people of Scotland only counts when we give Westminster the answers it wants to hear. The BBC and the Scottish media would react very differently if the SNP vowed to use Scottish Government to press for independence even if the pro-independence parties failed to secure a majority. There would be outraged editorials about traducing the will of the people of Scotland, Glenn Campbell would be asking if the forces of nationalism were putting democracy in Scotland at risk. The forces of nationalism are putting democracy in Scotland at risk, the forces of Anglo-British nationalism, and BBC Scotland and most of the Scottish media don’t care, because they are part of those same forces.

Independence is Scotland’s only chance of escaping the baleful influence of the far-right. The world has become a very dark and scary place, but Scotland could remain a beacon of hope and compassion.

The rise of the far-right has ushered in a new Dark Ages in which facts, morality and human decency have been ditched in favour of punching down on the marginalised and the powerless in favour of the further enrichment of the wealthy. You might have thought in an era like this in which millions of people are terrified about what the future might hold that the supposedly left wing Labour party would be offering a beacon of hope and solace in the darkness. However under Keir Starmer Labour is playing catch up with the Tories and Reform UK and is vying to snuff out those lit candles which remain.

Starmer’s change, and doubtless Sarwar’s “new direction” – he’s dropped the change slogan now that Starmer has made it toxic – appear to consist of pandering to the greed of the rich and powerful. Every single one of Starmer’s “tough decisions” to date has involved punching down on the poor, the elderly, and the vulnerable. Starmer’s “change” didn’t bring about any change from the cruelty for cruelty’s sake which we came to expect under the Tories.

Next in Labour’s sights are the disabled and the chronically ill. There are reports that the Labour is set to “crack down” on benefits paid to the disabled and chronically ill, aiming to save the public purse around £5 billion annually. In this Starmer is faithfully following the Trump/Musk playbook, which decries the disabled as leeches and losers. Because people deliberately set out to lose the use of their limbs just so they can get an extra £70 a week from the state.

According to some reports, the government is considering changing the qualifying criteria for the main benefit for disabled people – Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – which is in the process of being replaced by the new Scottish Adult Disability Payment in Scotland, so that 87 musculoskeletal conditions will no longer be qualifying conditions for for PIP. Other reports claim that the government is considering replacing continuing benefits with one-off payments. That’s useless for people whose disabilities are likely to be life-long. These changes are not motivated by any consideration of the needs of people with disabilities, they are purely concerned with budget cutting from a government that refuses to countenance making the wealthy pay their fair share.

The left wing comedian Alexei Sayle was right when he said, not long after Jeremy Corbyn was unseated as leader of the Labour Party: “The left of the Labour Party are nice, decent people and it was a privilege to meet them. The right of the Labour Party are some of the most fucking horrible people – vile, gruesome people. I’ve never met such awful people as those on the right of the Labour Party.”

The right of the Labour party is firmly in charge and it’s every bit as vile and gruesome as Alexei Sayle warned. Now Starmer is off to the USA to bend the knee to Donald Trump and is set to stroke Trumplethinskin’s galactic ego by offering him a stay at Balmoral Castle.

It’s all very well for the government to say that it wants to encourage the disabled to seek work, but that ignores the reality of the lives of disabled people. Speaking from personal experience I can assure the Labour party that being disabled is bloody hard work all by itself. People tell me – you’re doing so well – but what they don’t realise is just how physically exhausting and draining it is to get even simple tasks accomplished, how much planning and forethought it entails to get things done. That’s not just my reality, it’s the reality for most disabled people. Many employers won’t consider disabled people, and a lot of jobs are physically impossible for many disabled people to do. Even when there is a job that a disabled person can do, their productivity can be significantly lower than that of an able bodied person.

For my own part, I am incredibly fortunate that my job entails typing away on a keyboard, but before I became disabled I could touch type and could easily batter out a thousand words in an hour or less. Now I peck away with my one working hand, the hand that was non-dominant, and I make many more typos than I once did due to the problems of visual processing I still experience. Every disability is unique, every disabled person’s experiences are distinct, but speaking in broad generalities the hurdles that I encounter are not unusual for disabled people.

The disabled are the only minority anyone can become a part of at any time. Anyone could have a stroke, anyone could suffer life-changing injuries in an accident, anyone could develop a debilitating illness. An attack on the disabled is an attack on everyone.

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