I HAVE been watching the antics of the UK Labour Party in Liverpool. Each member of their shadow cabinet trotted up to the podium and sounded off about Tory failure and how they are going to turn around Labour’s fortunes at the next General Election. It really seemed quite surreal. This party has lost its way.

With the Union Jack in the background and the new national anthem be sounded off with great gusto, it is clear that there is not a wafer of difference between this red tory party and the blue tory party. These British nationalists with their HQs in London and their branch offices in the other nations of the UK peddle their promise of change. Ironically, the Tory party raises public borrowing to unprecedented levels, very much a fundamental Labour Party policy, while Keir Stammer talks about public spending controls. Radical tax changes and redistribution of wealth are nowhere to be seen.

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Sadly, England’s voters have to suffer the principle of “buggins’ turn”. If it is the Tories’ turn this time to govern, it must be Labour’s turn the next time. Fortunately for us Scots, we have a third alternative, one which we have democratically voted for on a regular basis for more than 15 years: the Scottish National Party! To Anas Sarwar, Keir Starmer, Lisa Nandy and Angela Rayner, Scotland as a nation means little other than seats they must win to get a Westminster majority.

The brutal attacks on the SNP and its performance in Scotland by those listed are such that any objectivity has been abandoned. It has been replaced by a Labour Party that has yet to get over the fact that they no longer “weigh their votes” at each election in Scotland and that the Scottish electorate have still to see the “error of their ways”. The fact is, they are irrelevant in Scotland, with one MP (only in power by Tory/LibDem tactical voting) out of 59 MPs and 22 MSPs (two constituency, 20 list) out of 129 MSPs.

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They are a rump party run from Westminster. In Scotland they are a divided party with an ever-changing leadership, with their voters having gone to the SNP in droves since 2014 and even one in four of their members supporting Scottish independence. Unfortunately for the Labour Party, a different strategy is required if they wish to turn around their fortunes in Scotland. A fundamental change towards Scottish independence will be crucial. Unfortunately, their Labour bosses in England only see winning back the “red wall voters” pandering to the needs of the “shires”, “the north” and the “champagne Labour intellectuals” of the south as their prime target. Saving their precious Union and no coalition with the SNP are fundamental to beating the Tories and getting back into Westminster.

It seems unbelievable the naivety of Sarwar, who cannot seem to get the “Scottish message” over to his English masters and even worse, happily echoes the policy objectives and aspirations of his party which are clearly aimed at an English voting audience. For a party founded on equality, trade union rights, tolerance, fairness and a caring society, it is breathtaking the vicious narrative and attacks that Sarwar and his senior Labour colleagues have made on the SNP during their 15 years in office. Of course, there are criticisms, but anyone looking dispassionately at the SNP government’s record would see a clear attempt to create a social democracy in our country which delivers the many principles which laid the foundations of the Labour Party.

Never has the social and political path being taken by Scotland been in direct contrast to that of England. Sadly, the British Labour Party with its branch office in Scotland has chosen the path of an England which has lost its way. Thankfully, the electorate of Scotland decide our government and have done so for 15 years and consigned the Labour party to the wilderness.

Dan Wood
Kirriemuir