Keir Starmer, denial of democracy will end in tears for you and the Union

DEAR Keir Starmer,

WE have never met formally, though we did exchange a few words when I was an SNP MP, a while back. I was impressed by your commanding performance at the despatch box, especially given the ignorant baying from the Tory benches that passes for civilised democratic discourse in the Palace of Westminster.

People accuse you of being boring but few of them could experience the Tory hordes at close quarters and still keep their cool the way you do.

You will, I hope, forgive this unusual form of address – the open letter. I resort to it only because you appear to have adopted the worst possible response to debating with the independence movement in Scotland, namely ignoring us.

I read in The Guardian newspaper that you have decided on a policy of maximum intransigence when it comes to the SNP. We are informed that you intend to announce there is no prospect whatsoever of an electoral deal – regardless of any circumstances – with SNP MPs after the 2024 General Election. That if Labour is the largest party, but lacks an overall majority – a likely scenario – you will simply form a minority government and defy the SNP to vote you down in favour of the Tories. And that a Starmer Labour government will refuse to grant a second independence referendum regardless.

For someone with your illustrious forename, your rush to deny Scotland’s right to decide its own future is not just strange, it runs counter to Labour’s deep historical commitment to Scottish Home Rule and, indeed, to the right of all of Britain’s imperial outposts to choose their own paths to self-government. Keir Hardie (above) famously backed Scottish Home Rule, freedom for India and votes for women. But you seem to believe that rejecting Scotland’s right to choose – even if the Scottish electorate returns a majority of pro-independence MPs – is a fundamental Labour principle.

I understand your pragmatic wish to head off specious Tory claims that a vote for Starmer is a vote for the SNP. But Keir Hardie always countered Tory stupidity with a principled argument. It is something I recommend.

I fully understand your commitment to defending the Union. But that is not the issue here. We are discussing the right of one part of a voluntary union to debate and vote periodically on the continuation of that voluntary union. This is a right already conceded to the voters of Northern Ireland under the Belfast Agreement. So why do you, Sir Keir, refuse a similar right to the Scottish electorate? Indeed, do you also deny the right of the Welsh people to vote on independence? Then why pick on the Scots?

Labour under your leadership seems bent on enforcing a new constitutional doctrine that there is no legal path for any part of the existing Union – well, Scotland anyway – to review its part in that entity. Including by electing a majority of local MPs on a platform of holding a consultative referendum.

READ MORE: Unionist media are defending the denial of democracy

Common sense tells us such a doctrine must be corrosive of any union in the long run. Especially as the grounds for such a doctrine are not principled but exist only to provide the Labour Party with a tool to head off gratuitous Tory attacks while appealing to the hardest of hardline Unionist votes in Scotland.

We have been here before – in Ireland. For decades before the First World War it was clear there was a majority in Ireland for constitutional change, ranging from Home Rule to outright independence. But successive British administrations were unwilling, for domestic party reasons, to address that democratic deficit. Indeed, in the decade immediately prior to 1914, successive British governments preferred to resist not just Irish Home Rule but also votes for women and an extension of male suffrage – all to appease the minority parties of the Protestant ascendancy on whose votes British mainstream politicians relied in the House of Commons.

Crude expediency did not work well then and it will end in tears now if a similar strategy is used to block democratic rights of expression in Scotland. Sadder still, Sir Keir, I doubt if your plan will actually achieve a working Labour government. For starters, ignoring Scotland’s desire for constitutional change has been the root cause of your party’s historic decline north of the Border, since the 1970s.

Hitting your head against a brick wall repeatedly, hoping the pain will stop, is a good definition of madness. Of course, you probably will offer yet another dose of devolution but that gambit is looking very outdated. I note that when Gordon Brown’s latest set of constitutional goodies went to the shadow cabinet it was immediately returned to sender.

If you think that supporting Scotland’s right to choose will set Tory teeth grating, imagine what Labour backing the political quagmire of federalism will do in a General Election context.

As for daring SNP MPs to vote you down, think again. Are you really saying you would risk a Tory government rather than talk to the SNP? If that’s what you are saying, then Labour are truly dead intellectually and emotionally. If you are bluffing then be aware that government by gamble is a good way of writing Labour off permanently.

Statesmanship and leadership are about taking tough decisions and spelling them out to the electorate. Pretending you can avoid tough decisions by ignoring the fact a whopping majority of Scottish MPs will be elected on a platform of support for a second referendum is merely weakness.

And you will never enter Number 10, Sir Keir, by being weak.

Of course I understand you are worried the Tories will claim you are in Nicola Sturgeon’s pocket. But I doubt if the next election – in the middle of a raging economic crisis and after the shenanigans of a Boris Johnson administration – will be fought on such crude messaging.

After 14 years of abject Tory failure, the voters will be looking for solutions to the big problems. They will want stability and action, not Boris jokes and constant cock-ups. Sir Keir, my advice is to fight the next UK election on what you can achieve rather than what you want to avoid doing (because you are frit of crude Tory innuendo). That way you might actually win.

The curious thing here is that it is obvious Labour are calculating that the SNP would not vote them down in a motion of confidence.

In other words, whatever Sir Keir or Ian Murray say in public, they don’t actually believe the SNP are Tartan Tories. Certainly the Scottish electorate don’t, otherwise Scotland would have the most right-wing voters in Europe.

Perhaps, Sir Keir, you might then have the courage of your convictions. Why not lay out a decent and progressive programme for government – including consultative referendums in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on constitutional change and maybe on a republic for the whole UK – and demand the nationalist parties back Labour from the onset?

Too radical? Sir Keir, if you think you can win the next UK General Election by avoiding radicalism, you have not been looking at the world outside your House of Commons window.