KEIR Starmer has said there is a “heavy duty” on his Labour Government to deliver change for Scotland.
Speaking ahead of the 10th anniversary of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum next week, Starmer claimed he had “long understood why so many people in Scotland want change”.
But he insisted that election of his Labour Government was the way that Scots could have “meaningful, impactful and immediate change”.
It comes after Labour had its most successful election in Scotland since the referendum, with the General Election seeing the party win 37 seats in Scotland.
Labour's election victory came after years of struggling to win votes in Scotland after the party teamed up with the Tories as part of the Better Together campaign.
READ MORE: Lesley Riddoch interviews John Swinney 10 years on from indyref
Speaking to Scottish political journalists inside Downing Street, Starmer said Labour had made the “right argument which is Scotland needs change”.
He added: “That change can be brought about by a Labour Government.
“That’s the most meaningful, impactful and immediate change that people could vote for and they did.
“That was the message we carried into the election, we now have 37 Labour MPs.”
Asked if the result of the recent General Election, which saw the SNP return its smallest group of MPs to Westminster since 2010, showed that Scotland had moved on from the constitutional debate, Starmer said: “I actually long understood why so many people in Scotland want change.”
However, he said to deal with this desire for change, Labour has to “deliver in the future” by “making sure we deliver a changed Scotland”.
The Prime Minister said: “I think that is the change with this General Election. That puts a heavy duty on this Labour Government to deliver the change that we promised and that is why we are doing the difficult work now.”
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, has called for leading figures from both sides of Scotland’s constitutional divide to come together with civic Scotland to consider how the resolve the “impasse” over the country’s future.
He said there needs to be a “grown up discussion” about the path to a second referendum, suggesting: “Maybe with the new Government in London and an SNP government in Edinburgh we can do that now.”
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