The National:

LABOUR’S red rose has never looked so anaemic. Like a set of old football shirts washed for the 59th time any residual colour is now more of a memory than a fact. If you were being unfair you might suggest that having a multi-millionaire knight of the realm in Sir Keir Starmer as head of the party of the people on one side of the border is merely unfortunate. That another millionaire has been chosen to lead the party in Scotland seems like carelessness.

There’s no reason to suggest that the business fortune accumulated by Anas Sarwar’s family didn’t happen without hard work and a spirit of enterprise. But these qualities are easier to turn into gold when they proceed without tiresome obstacles like trade union rights and paying your workers a proper Living Wage.

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Watching these two in socially-distanced real time during Sir Keir’s visit to Scotland yesterday made you wonder if there had ever been a period in the party’s 121-year history when it resembled the Tories as much as it does right now.

This is not an attack on wealth honestly come by and appropriately taxed. No one is suggesting that your Socialist credentials ought to be questioned simply because you might have a few million quid in the bank. But let’s be honest here: a very rich person seeking to inspire a party whose sacred responsibility is to fight against class-driven injustice must know they’ll be expected to travel an extra mile or so. No one could be in any doubt that Tony Benn, the former Sir Anthony Wedgwood Benn, had deep-rooted Socialist principals.

So let’s be charitable here and say that Sir Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar still have a lot of work to do before they can convince anyone that they aren’t currently embarked on a jolly along the path of least resistance, the one that “leads to crooked rivers and crooked men”.

Yesterday, was as predictable as it can ever get when two politicians without an original idea between them to lift disadvantaged people out of poverty get together. Sarwar wants Holyrood to be “a recovery parliament” in what amounts to the most meaningless and vapid political slogan heard in Scotland since 1707’s “We’re Better Together”. Is there anyone who doesn’t want Holyrood to foster recovery from the effects of Coronavirus?

Not satisfied with just the one insipid slogan, Sarwar produced another that remains just as fatuous as it was in its heyday eight years ago. He’ll be prioritising “unity over division”.

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Sarwar and his UK boss boosted their careers by conniving at the removal of Jeremy Corbyn, the only Labour leader who actually walked the walk in recent history. Indeed if they and others had shown more loyalty to Corbyn he might actually have become Prime Minister. There wasn’t much “Unity over division” going around then.

Each of these men have decided that the path of least resistance to the prevailing orthodoxy of capitalism is the way ahead because, well … that secures you more approval from the right-wing press and the BBC. Not that it achieves anything in the polls. Despite overseeing the highest coronavirus death toll in Europe and employing Tony Soprano to oversee its procurement strategy the Tory Government has still managed to widen its lead over Labour. There’s a simple reason for this. When faced with a choice between real Tories and boutique Tories the voters will always choose the genuine article.

Several corporate enterprises have done very well from the pandemic while many others had the financial reserves to endure it. But Sir Keir refuses to support a corporation tax, while backing a general tax hike for ordinary people. His economic route out of coronavirus would be led by “Recovery Bonds” – IOUs for those lending money to the Government. Fun fact here for Sir Keir: many of your constituents won’t have any money to invest in anything after the pandemic.

How about simply getting money in their pockets by securing jobs with decent pay and conditions and providing affordable housing? Sir Keir though wants to reach out to business and bring us all together by showing support for the armed forces and standing by the Union Jack, something that all Tory Ministers have been told to do whenever they’re doing a Zoom interview.

In seven elections across every possible jurisdiction in the UK – Holyrood, Westminster, Local Authority and European - Scottish voters have told the Labour Party that they don’t consider them to be serious about their work. That Sarwar is still saying we’re Better Together in a Union with a gangster state that actually wants to increase its nuclear arsenal suggests Labour still aren’t serious about their work.

That he is now beholden to a London boss who can’t lay a finger on the Tory Goodfellas suggests that this perception won’t be changing any time soon.