THE Labour Party conference has kicked off in Liverpool, following hot on the heels of the Conservatives’ disastrous get-together in Manchester that would have left Enoch Powell blushing.

Whatever else may be discussed by Keir Starmer’s party, it seems clear that, akin to the Conservative government they seek to replace, Labour have likewise put a target on the devolution settlement.

It has left me wondering if they have finally, inescapably, turned their backs on any pretence of respect for the mechanisms by which the United Kingdom allegedly runs. Or to be more specific, those agreements that were meant to cleanly separate that which Westminster can rule on in the devolved nations … and that which it cannot.

From the south comes forth another proclamation to the Scots – the promise (or threat) of even greater intrusions into devolution from the Scotland Office should Starmer find himself holding the keys to Downing Street after the next election – something I would still hesitate to take as a given for the time being.

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Labour have proposed boosting the UK Government department’s role in the governance of Scotland. According to MP Ian Murray, they will seek to “deliver strategic funding” through the British outpost – a rather calculated way of phrasing a plan to circumvent the Scottish Government to promote the interests of Westminster over our own elected reps.

More than that, he spoke of a revitalised role for the office in Scotland that would fundamentally undermine the role of the Scottish Government. This sounds like an organisation that has cast off its identity as “the party of devolution”.

After all, it was not so long ago that the Labour Party leader dismissed concerns over potential divergences between the Labour Party and its Scottish branch office with the rather poor choice of words: “What I say will be what Anas Sarwar says”.

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Perhaps the most charitable means of interpreting such a phrase would be to see it as confirmation that Sarwar and Starmer are wholly aligned in their political aims – quite in contrast to what recent disagreements would suggest.

Whatever the intent, it certainly sounds more akin to a diktat from on high than a promise of mutual agreement – a note for Sarwar and the rest of Scottish Labour to remember their place in the pecking order.

The SNP have deemed this to be another power grab – and given the nature of previous interventions from the Westminster government, it would be difficult to classify it as anything else. As when the Conservatives jackbooted their way across the spirit of the devolution settlement, so too, it appears, Labour are ready to follow in their footsteps.

Labour now seem to hold the same distaste for devolved decision-making as their colleagues across the aisle – which is to say that it is viewed as a nuisance at best, and a political opportunity to exploit at worst.

It wasn’t enough that Labour played their role in the Smith Commission to limit the extent to which new powers would come to Scotland following the No vote in 2014, nor for it to have sat back and allowed the misuse of Section 35 orders to unjustly block legislation in the Scottish Parliament.

Now they seem intent on bringing Scotland to heel through the same mechanism as their potential predecessors.

Mark my words, whatever allusions to the advancement devolution that follow these next few days will be as toothless as the party’s leadership – assuming that any at all are even made.

And while Labour’s victory in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election is being spun as a symbol of all that is to come, it is this arrogance and entitlement to Scotland that may just be what will cut down any victory long before it has had a chance to take hold.

Boldly, Murray wishes to frame the Conservative Party’s overstepping into devolved territory as simply a means to pick a fight with the SNP – as if, in contrast, their own decisions to eschew the democratic wishes of Scotland’s electorate are exempt from the same criticisms.

But to make the choice to push spending decisions in devolved areas, rather than contributions through the Barnett formula as is right, is no less a political decision than when the Conservative government has chosen to do so.

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An undemocratic act remains just so, even when those committing it consider themselves The Good Ones™. And while Starmer continues to ape the Conservatives in discussions around their use of Section 35 orders, it seems clear that Labour have no intention of reversing the undemocratic interjections of the far-right party that have come to infest Westminster’s hallways.

All of which contributes to a stark portrait of a party that has fundamentally lost itself, having abandoned its foundations to instead teeter along behind the populists in power.

Labour have not been “the party of devolution” for quite some time now. Like with all that used to make Labour great, it has been discarded. Now pretence of anything else has joined the policy in the scrap heap.