‘SIR” Keir Starmer’s address to the Labour party conference was gut-wrenchingly awful. It was redolent of Ian Duncan Smith’s quiet man speech to the Tories in 2002. It was charisma-free, tedious and brain-melting.

It was somewhat ironic that he held it in an empty room, as that’s about the size of audience it deserved.

Starmer banged on about “family values”. He seemed to be plagiarising John Major’s disastrous “back to basics” campaign of the nineties.

READ MORE: Everything Keir Starmer said about Scotland in his Labour conference speech​

In between the abhorrent prognostications to “family values” Starmer peppered his speech with paens to “country”, assuring the empty room of his love for the UK and his support for “national security”, ie suppression of workers’ rights, endless war, mass surveillance and tax cuts for the wealthy.

To reassure big business that he is no threat, Starmer boasted about his time as Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales. During this time he pursued vindictive prosecutions against the 2011 rioters, making sure those convicted of minor crimes were given long sentences. He also went after poor people accused of benefit fraud, but not rich tax evaders.

Since becoming leader Starmer has lined up behind Boris Johnson and the Tories on Covid-19. His speech promised this would continue. Starmer is trying to shape Labour into another version of the Tories.

READ MORE: Keir Starmer to address the nation after PM's speech

He also dropped Labour’s support for rejoining the EU. Starmer pledged to win Scotland back. However, such is the level of ignorance in the Labour high command that Angela Rayner (the deputy leader) could not even get Scottish branch manager Richard Leonard’s name right.

Starmer has contempt for democracy –he won’t support the right of people in Scotland to have a say on independence. “Scottish” Labour are currently on 14% in the polls. With the current trajectory of Starmer, the revival of “Scottish” Labour so long prophesied and hoped by the Unionist media looks an impossibility.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

WELL, Michael Fry is at it again, slaying the socialist dragon and its wicked, or foolish, defenders and rescuing Scotland from the evils of equality. Just where would we be without his advice and protection?

Fortunately, the dragon he wants to slay is not a real one, it is one created in his own head by prejudice and fear; it can’t survive in the warm light of rational thought. He builds his monster by the assumed direct opposites of undefined “capitalism” verses undefined “socialism”, where his “capitalism” (with all its failings) represents efficiency and the natural state of affairs and his “socialism” represents utopian equality, inefficiency and poverty.

READ MORE: An independent Scotland will without doubt be a capitalist nation

It is an excellent basis for a fairy story with a simple good versus evil plot, but it has no link to reality.

He informs us that any Scotland which emerges from the present independence struggle will be capitalist – well, of course it will. Scotland, like other societies, is changing, but not many people – not even us foolish socialists – believe that it is changing so fast that the new Scotland we want to build will be socialist immediately after independence. So on that specific prediction, Michael is almost certainly correct.

What Michael needs to think about, rather than looking for a political label to stick on it, is just what kind of society it will be. Will it reject neoliberalism ,which is failing anyway, or will it be more of a Keynesian type of mixed economy, which he was critical of Nicola Sturgeon for daring to suggest, or what? What is his vision?

Give us a vision of our new Scotland, Michael, then we can know what you are talking about and we can debate it rationally. Don’t try to impress us with scare stories – the Scottish people are too politically educated to be impressed by that.

Andy Anderson
Saltcoats

“AN independent Scotland will without doubt be a capitalist nation” says the good soul Michael Fry. But what is a capitalist nation?

The UK-led business culture of market-driven capitalism is in deep crisis and close to collapse under a Conservative government. It is more than incredible to even consider

that scenario, but with further business lockdowns, commercial restrictions and wider government interventions announced, the “Tory free-market capitalism” is in a desperate condition.

To add to this apocalyptic scenario we are about to face six months of four perfect storms: Covid-induced massive unemployment over Christmas; Brexit-created serious trading dislocations in January; major political crisis with a polarised presidential election in the world’s capitalist capital fron November to January; all against a backdrop of persistent global climate disasters.

Contemporary capitalism cannot cope with the impact of these four “horsemen” of the free-market apocalypse. As we speak the business community is pleading for public-sector intervention, taxpayer support and state-funded bailouts just for their “capitalist ” commercial survival.

This is Corbynista socialism but with Boris-Conservatives in charge. Contradictions all around we see in this “Tory-capitalist UK”.

Thom Cross
Carluke