A POLL reported by GB News on January 25 found Labour currently sitting on 50% of the national vote, up 5%, while the Conservative Party are at 21%. This represents a five-point increase in support for Labour and increases the gap between Labour and the Conservatives to 29 points.
Hands up, I don’t subscribe to GB News, and I doubt the veracity of the claim of a “national” vote, but it was the most up-to-date I could find.
You often hear that when governments are in trouble, the opposition rallies in public perception. Would that mean Labour are now gaining and maintaining because the Tory Party are failing?
If so, with Westminster in freefall, how come in Scotland we don’t have some exponential growth in favour of independence?
How come the race to the bottom that the UK is currently winning hasn’t seen a rise in pro-indyvoting intention?
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Wednesday saw the biggest day of multiple strikes for more than 10 years, with an estimated half a million people withdrawing their labour. Everybody loses money. The strikers aren’t paid on strike days.
When parents and carers have to stay at home on teacher strike days, when you can’t get to work if your commuter train isn’t running, what about the coffee/lunch hospitality sector? It’s taking a hit.
And there won’t be any popping in to do a spot of shopping in break time, or on the way home as retail’s hit too. And who’s got that much disposable, spare income for “extras”these days?
The overall fall in income generation across society must be massive when you remember that the recent spate of strikes has been running for eight months, beginning in June 2022 after members of the RMT voted to strike over planned changes to their pay and working conditions.
From then till now, Westminster has been stonewalling, hoping to wait it out, hoping the public will turn against the strikers, and hoping that inflation will fall by however little, providing the Government with a “we were right” headline. With Westminster misrule writ large, why isn’t there public outrage across Scotland?
Thursday’s rise in the Bank of England base rate will see a knock-on effect on mortgage repayments. Costs will rise and families will be required to find more money by the end of the month. This latest assault on personal finances isn’t due to Covid or the war in Ukraine, but primarily due to that mid-year debacle, with Liz Truss and co adding to the overall money worries that most people are experiencing.
It’s more than a financial crisis, or cost of living crisis, or a post-Brexit crisis. It’s a combined crisis with the potential to ruin lives for generations to come.
Many of us were part of the #LightsOn rally this week, and will be out over the weekend on stalls, or leafleting and letter-boxing. But if Westminster’s failure to govern hasn’t produced indignation and demands for political change beyond those of us Yessers, just what can we do to bring about the necessary change in the thinking of those still in doubt about an indy Scotland?
Selma Rahman
Edinburgh
Westminster must take us for idiots. Over the last week or so, they have been paying some people a refund on part of their electricity bills to try and stop power cuts. All great. They are admitting by doing this that for more than 30 years they have ignored the need for more power generation.
At the same time, they are trying to get us to buy electric cars. We do not produce enough power for this, nor does the grid have capacity. It’s all political bluster.
Britishvolt was supposedly going to get us into electric car manufacturing heaven. It folded last month as the Westminster government failed to deliver a promised £30 million loan. They said they had no customers. That is because the plant was not built yet.
The UK has been declining from the 1970s with a boost on its downward slope from Thatcher’s destruction of manufacturing. Then the banking crisis of 2008 caused by weak government controls of the financial sector. Then a master stroke in stupidity, Brexit.
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The UK Government does not have enough money for the public-sector pay, the NHS, decent pensions, a functioning armed services capability, because it has sold off and destroyed wealth creation.
I only hope that an independent Scotland gets better politicians. Ones that understand and control the banks. Fingers crossed. Hopefully, they will talk to people who make things.
Robert Anderson
Dunning
Once again we have the spectre of Gordon Brown rising from his box in the basement. He is heading to Glasgow with his think tank’s report calling for closer ties between Scotland and the rest of the UK. The report will say that Scotland should be better connected in order to use the “financial muscle” of London, Oxford and Cambridge to improve business innovation.
Is this the same financial muscle as demonstrated by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng when they wrecked the economy recently? His memory must be failing him. I wish someone would lock this clown in his box and throw away the key. Our economy is set to shrink and perform worse than other major economies, including Russia. We need to regain our independence as quickly as possible to become the wealthy nation that we are capable of being.
Gordon Walker
Paisley
I read that the Labour MP Kim Johnson has apologised to the House of Commons for calling the newly elected government of Israel “fascist” and for alluding to Amnesty International’s description of present-day Israel as an “apartheid state”.
Why on earth apologise?
E Hamilton
Glasgow
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