Susan Aitken
LABOUR ARE HELL- BENT ON CONTINUING AUSTERITY FOR HARD- WORKING SCOTS
SIR Keir Starmer marked Labour’s first 50 or so days in government with a series of grimly predictable statements.
“Things can only get worse” he told the media in Downing Street’s Rose Garden, following up with eerily familiar lines about “tough choices” and the necessity of “short term pain”.
Given that retention of the twochild cap and scrapping pensioner fuel allowances have already set such a low bar for the new Labour government, the Prime Minister’s bleak soundbites weren’t much of a surprise.
But now we have it from the horse’s mouth. Labour is committed to prolonging the Tories’ austerity agenda. With a fresh wave of huge cuts to public spending on the immediate horizon, it’s Labour’s austerity now.
And just like their predecessors’ “tough choices”, the pain that Sir Keir plans to deliver will once again fall heaviest on the shoulders of those least equipped to bear it. There’s nothing shortterm about this pain – it’s just a continuation of the last miserable 14 years of the Tories.
Throughout the election campaign the SNP warned of the coming of Austerity 2.0, if Labour didn’t abandon their determination to stick to right- wing Tory economics. Yet Labour repeatedly told the electorate this was untrue. Rightly sick of the most corrupt government in living memory, the public were misled into believing they’d see a new approach from Labour to public services, to growth and to tackling inequalities.
But what Sir Keir and chancellor Rachel Reeves tell us now is that Labour is just going to pick up where Osborne, Truss, Sunak, Johnson and the rest left off, screwing millions of households with their cuts to public spending.
Meanwhile here in Scotland,
Labour have embarked on a shameless campaign of gaslighting and deception.
Anas “Read My Lips” Sarwar – who opposes both new powers for the Scottish Parliament and progressive taxation but who makes constant demands for the Scottish Government to spend more in almost every area – is now describing spending in Scotland on social security and public sector pay rises as “SNP incompetence”.
In other words, the millionaire branch office boss is telling us that he thinks protecting vulnerable families with measures like the Scottish Child Payment or helping workers through the worst cost- of- living crisis in modern times is “incompetent”. To deflect from the Labour austerity he denied would ever happen, Mr Sarwar is now ramping up his use of the Donald Trump misinformation playbook. And incredibly we have the boss of Labour’s council group George Redmond pointing out the impact of fiscal austerity on our services but without a single peep about the role of the UK Government in creating or solving that.
The reality is that the vast majority of Scottish Government funding is determined by the UK Government. Decisions at Westminster have direct consequences for Scottish public services. So, for example, the decision to scrap universal winter fuel payments has already removed funding from the Scottish social security budget.
It sticks in my craw that the same Labour politicians who oppose any kind of additional powers for Scotland also rush to blame Holyrood for every challenge we face, even those the UK Government has direct responsibility for. Two- faced doesn’t even begin to describe them. Starmer, Sarwar, Reeves and Redmond know exactly what they’re doing – and it’s trying to lead you up the garden path.
Right now, all the signals from the chancellor are that she intends to use her Budget for further public spending cuts. This will have a devastating impact on Scottish public resources, with direct consequences for the local government services everyone relies on, the public sector workforce and poverty and hardship in our communities. Scotland is already falling victim to Labour austerity.
Next week, the SNP will put forward a motion calling for work to assess the potential impact on Glasgow should the UK Budget trigger further cuts to the Scottish Government Budget. This will be shared with the chancellor ahead of her Autumn Statement. She will be left in no doubt that she must abandon the path of Labour austerity and commit to investment in public services in a way that delivers real benefits for Glasgow, Scotland and indeed all parts of the UK.