How is anyone supposed to believe Keir Starmer's promises to Scotland?

KEIR Starmer is campaigning in Scotland this week, mouthing platitudes to make out like he cares about what people in Scotland think.

He's not here to learn what people in Scotland actually want; he's here to tell people in Scotland what he has decided that we want. What Starmer wants is a crushing majority over the Tories at the next Westminster general election and he wants to neuter the SNP as a political threat so he can continue to ignore Scottish demands on Brexit, the constitution and the anti-democratic dysfunction of the Westminster parliament.

The reality is that whenever Starmer opens his mouth we hear policies that could just as easily be espoused by the Tories. This is by design as Starmer's key audience is not Scotland, which remains an irrelevant side show to the main performance: politics in England. Starmer is carefully calibrating his message to appeal to voters in Brexit supporting seats in England who deserted Labour in droves for the Tories in 2019. He has calculated that the best way to attract the votes of those who were previously persuaded by a message of right-wing conservative English nationalism is to make a right wing conservative English nationalist pitch of his own.

Judging by recent opinion polling this is clearly working. So, don't expect it to change between now and the next general election. Starmer will not do anything that risks scaring those voters off. His terror of being depicted as soft on benefit claimants is why he will not even toss Labour in Scotland the bone of pledging to reverse the Tories' hideous two-child cap on benefits. This also shows us just how little influence the Scottish Optional Identity Mark really has on UK-wide Labour policy.

abour leader Sir Keir Starmer (left) and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar during a visit to the Lind and Lime distillery in Leith (Image: Lesley Martin)

In a 2700-word long screed for The Scotsman, Starmer acknowledged that Westminster is dysfunctional with "short termism" and "gesture politics" baked in to how the institution works. He even admitted that people in Scotland are not convinced that his party offers a way ahead. He then confirmed the suspicions of many of us in Scotland by not including anywhere in his vapid 2700 word 'vote for me' infomercial any hint of a remedy to the many and manifest problems he had identified with the Westminster Parliament.

Under a majority Starmer government, the discredited First Past the Post voting system will remain in place even though it effectively disenfranchises everyone who does not live in a Labour-Tory swing seat. The undemocratic House of Lords will continue as a palace of patronage, the institutionalisation of what in any other country would be rightly condemned as corruption. Scotland will continue to be ignored and marginalised.

Starmer also waxed lyrical about the UK, describing it as "four great nations working together for a common good." Or rather, four great nations doing what the government chosen by the largest nation tells the rest of them to do. The UK is not a "common project" and it's simply gaslighting to pretend that it is.

The Brexit that Starmer pledges he will make work is not for the common good, it's an epic act of harm inflicted upon a Scotland and Northern Ireland which rejected it. All Starmer offers Scotland is the same content-free sloganeering devoid of any substance that we already get from the Tories. Under Starmer Scotland will still be expected to do as it is told. His words are the very definition of the gesture politics that he claims to be opposed to.

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So, Starmer, spare us the intelligence-insulting words about how the UK is "four great nations working together for a common good," and tell us exactly how you are going to give real and material substance to that assertion. Of course, Starmer is not going to do that, because we all know that he is as much of a Westminster centralist as the Tories he wants to replace in the Buggin's turn that passes for the British political system.

It's not just in his attitude to Scotland that Starmer's centralising instincts are clear. He has a notoriously poor relationship with Labour mayors in the English regions. In May this year, Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester accused Starmer and his aides of briefing against him instead of "pulling together for a Labour majority government."

During an interview with Times Radio, Burnham said: "Whenever I go out there with something positive, the Westminster negative briefing machine somehow clicks into gear."

It was also reported earlier this month that Starmer is furious with London mayor Sadiq Khan over his plan to introduce free school meals in Greater London and that he blames Khan for Labour's failure to win the Uxbridge by-election last month. The Tories successfully fended off a strong challenge to Labour by marshalling opposition to the extension of London's Ultra Low Emissions Zone into the outer London boroughs.

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One Labour source told The i that the relationship between the Labour's regional leaders in England and Starmer's office was "non-existent".

If Starmer is incapable or unwilling to build good working relationships with devolved authorities within England – authorities which are Labour controlled and run – he is highly unlikely to build a productive working relationship with a Scottish Government run and controlled by the SNP.

Under Starmer we are set to see a continuation of the high-handed dictatorial command style of inter-governmental relationships which have characterised dealings between Holyrood and Westminster these past few years.

Meanwhile it has been reported that the Scotland Office has spent more than £75,000 on hospitality in just 16 months. The money was spent by Tory ministers on alcohol, food, and catering and security staff at 26 events between March 2022 and July this year. That's worth remembering the next time the Scottish Tories get their knickers in a twist about the £11,000 spent over three years on Nicola Sturgeon's travel arrangements.