Vote for Scotland’s interests, vote SNP
Speymouth
Tomorrow it’s get rid of the Tories day. After fourteen years of miserable vindictiveness the Conservatives are on the way out. The Tories are in for a historic defeat. According to some opinion polls they could even be left vying with the Lib Dems for second place, which would strip them of the position of official opposition and relegate them to third place. That would strip the Tories of Westminster funding and deprive them of the right to question Keir Starmer at PMQs. It might also help to break the Labour and Tory conspiracy of silence on Brexit and force the issue of rejoining the European customs union and single market back onto the political agenda.
The only real question in England tomorrow is the scale of Labour’s victory and the extent to which tactical voting can reduce the Tories to fewer than 100 seats. Just like every other Westminster general election, this election will be decided in England where the vast majority of Commons seats are. England has already made its mind up about the corrupt and chaotic Tories and wants to see the back of them. In Scotland we are as ever mere by standers to the clown show of English politics.
It’s useful at this juncture to remind people that in Scotland we’re not voting the Tories out of power tomorrow because here they were never anything more than a particularly damaging and noxious minor party. A vote for Labour in Scotland is a wasted vote. Labour might not be the Tories but under Starmer they *are* conservatives. We forget that political reality at our peril.
The Conservatives have not won a general election in Scotland since the 1950s. All the decades of Tory rule, all the harm they’ve wrought, is because Scotland is part of the UK and gets the governments England votes for. Equally a Labour party that adopts Tory spending policies and which refuses to even discuss the Brexit shaped elephant in the room is a Labour party which is tailoring itself to the English political landscape. It’s not a Labour party which speaks for Scotland and no matter what Keir Starmer or Anas Sarwar might say, Labour absolutely does not need to win SNP seats in Scotland in order to get the Tories out.
If you vote Labour in Scotland you are voting for Brexit, you are voting for the two child cap on benefits, you are voting for continuing austerity, you are voting to hand over Scotland’s vast potential for renewable energy to Westminster which will ensure that London reaps the benefit while Scotland is left with a few crumbs in the exact same way that Scotland was cheated out of the financial benefits of North Sea oil and gas. At least this time they won’t be able to claim it’s running out when Scotland tries to take back what is rightfully the property of the people of Scotland.
If you vote Labour in Scotland you are voting for British nationalist triumphalism, gleefully proclaiming that Scotland has rejected ‘nationalism’ because the British flag waving anti immigration pro Brexit party of Keir Starmer isn’t nationalist at all, oh no. If Labour wins this election in Scotland Starmer and Sarwar will proclaim that Scotland has voted against independence even though the issue of Scottish independence has scarcely figured at all in this campaign. They will be insufferable, but their smug self satisfaction will be short lived.
We saw what happened with Michael Shanks, Labour’s victor in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by election. Far from standing up for the people of Rutherglen, the moment he was elected he turned into an obedient puppet for Starmer. Scotland needs MPs who will stand up for Scotland’s interests, not dutiful lobby fodder who will do Starmer’s bidding as he panders to the right wing prejudices of anti-immigrant pro-Brexit voters in England.
In Scotland, you get free prescriptions, free personal care, free university tuition, and the Scottish Child Payment – lifting 100,000 children out of poverty, Labour stands for none of that. Labour is enthusiastic about involving the private sector in the NHS, its so called Great British energy company is not an energy company at all but rather an ‘investment vehicle’ for selling off Scotland’s renewable energy resources to the private sector.
There’s only one party standing in this election which can provide a voice for Scotland in that dysfunctional institution of Westminster and which actually has a realistic chance of getting its candidates elected. That’s the SNP. Save your Scottish Green or Alba votes for a Scottish election because tomorrow all that they will achieve is to allow an anti independence party to claim victory.
In Scotland, in contradistinction to England, there is still everything to play for, the result of this election is not a foregone conclusion in Scotland. Labour will certainly make substantial gains and the SNP will certainly suffer significant losses, but the margins in seats contested between Labour and the SNP are very tight and the result could go either way. But there is one thing that is quite certain. If you vote Labour in Scotland you are not just voting for the most right wing Labour party in history, a party which espouses policies which a short time ago were associated with the Tories, you are also voting to be marginalised and ignored. If you care about Scotland and the distinctively left of centre political priorities of the majority of people in this country, there is only one realistic choice at the ballot box tomorrow and that’s the SNP. Vote to reject the abhorrent two child cap on benefits, vote to reject privatisation of the NHS, vote to reject the economic self harm of Brexit. Vote to reject flag shagging British nationalist miliarism. Vote to reject Trident. Vote for Scotland’s right to determine its own future. Vote for a kinder gentler nation. Vote SNP.
Starmer will become Prime Minister on Friday and will do so with a landslide majority, but he will enjoy a very short political honeymoon before the reality dawns that his promise of ‘change’ was a false promise, just another of his many lies. He cannot escape the consequences of his duplicity for long. He will quickly become deeply unpopular and the triumphalism of Anas Sarwar and Jackie Baillie will evaporate when they face an angry Scottish electorate in May 2026 and Labour in Scotland pays the price for Starmer’s lies. Any reversal suffered by the SNP tomorrow will be short lived, this Starmer government will conclusively prove to Scotland that Westminster cannot be fixed.
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