‘THIS election is all about change” according to Labour’s Keir Starmer. Is that right? We’ll believe it when we see it.

Why should we doubt? Because in the same breath he openly commits his party to upholding the dominant free-market economic model, being the party of wealth-creation and the most business-friendly government in recent history.

I believe it to be a demonstrable truism that the economic infrastructure shapes and determines the political and social superstructure. That being so, if Labour wins the election no-one will notice any fundamental difference because of their commitment to that particular economic model. Thus, we may see some superficial changes but there will be no substantive benefits for society because that model will not allow for such fundamental alteration. It therefore follows that there will be no substantive social or political change either, and that includes necessary reforms of health, education, housing etc.

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As a result, it makes absolutely no sense for Scots to vote Labour, because their commitment to that economic model will require them to dismantle many of the meaningful changes the Scottish Parliament has initiated over the past decade.

Starmer describes himself as a socialist, but socialism means harnessing the power of the social, the collective resources of the community, for the benefit of the majority of the people, and that cannot be achieved if you then funnel the wealth of that community into the private sector as Labour have committed themselves to do.

For example, they have announced they will encourage greater participation for the private sector in the NHS and the wider health community, thus ensuring resources will be siphoned out of health rather than being invested into it. That is what the neoliberal market model does, has always done, and always will do. Thus a vote for Labour means voting to continue our subservience to a feral and mostly foreign elite, and to the obscene inequalities that stem from the application of that form of economics.

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Nothing could be farther from the interests of the people of Scotland than a vote for the Labour Party, and the stupidity of such a vote is demonstrated by the fact that Labour are openly telling us what they are going to do. Therefore we cannot whine and complain when they do it as it will be our own fault.

Take the example of immigration. Immigration is not a problem in itself, but it is a huge problem for the dominant economic model as it requires the marshalling of the resources of the community to address the problems that arise from immigration, and the economic model will not allow for that. All the problems immigration poses for health, housing and education, for example, are not caused by immigrants, they are caused by the carnage that 40 years of a particular economic model have inflicted on those national institutions.

We cannot cope because successive Westminster administrations, in thrall to a demonstrably inhuman and anti-social economic model, have systematically destroyed our ability to cope by waging war against those same institutions and literally stealing their resources and depriving them of the financial ability and the labour force to meet the challenges that face them. The tragedy is that a vote for Labour is a vote for more of the same.

I have no faith that the majority of the Scottish electorate will consider such factors. They may vote, not on reality or reason, but on the propaganda and outright lies that they want to believe. It is their choice. They will have to live with their choice; the future is bleak.

Peter Kerr
Kilmarnock