Labour won’t ever be an answer for Scots, it’s time to believe

First and foremost, there are few more staunch Unionists than Sir Keir Starmer. Frankly, if independence is your bag, you might as well vote Tory than plight your troth to the man named after a socialist pioneer who must be fair birling in his grave at what the party has become of late.

I don’t subscribe to the knee-jerk “red Tory” jibe. Instead, I view the Labour leader as the palest possible pink; more feartie than Barbie. Neither do I subscribe to the charge that it was utter hypocrisy to go in to bat for Jeremy Corbyn. The writ of ­collective responsibility runs deep in the shadow cabinet, not least with an election looming.

It means you will wait in vain for the once-revered Yvette Cooper to yelp in ­essential anguish if – as is rumoured – her leader adopts a policy of sending asylum seekers offshore to have their cases heard. Now we’ve learned that Tony Blair’s advisers had similar thoughts including sticking would-be refugees on planes as soon as they arrived.

Or they could be dispatched to places like Turkey, Kenya or South Africa mused the PM’s chief of staff. Apparently, Rwanda failed to make the cut.

Failing which, they could be detained in places like the Falklands or Mull, offered the then attorney general’s office. Ah yes, Mull. It’s only little Scotland after all, and even if the natives proved restless, a fair few of them migrated there from England who could doubtless be bribed to acquiesce.

These were not actual policies, mind, but the product of a brainstorming session where Mr Blair had insisted on radical measures being considered to discourage migration. Which, when you think about it, has a horribly familiar ring. So if Sir Keir is indeed thinking along similar lines, there is a Labour precedent.

Sir Keir, allegedly a staunch Remainer, has since refused to enumerate Brexit’s many failures, not least the catastrophic impact on Scottish trade and industry.

Instead, he’s pronounced the matter closed, having no plans to revive European ties or the much-lauded Erasmus exchange programme for students. Should you still be in possession of a cigarette paper (naughty you!), you might find it tricky to insert it between the European policies of Starmer and Sunak.

As for the NHS – fortuitously a devolved matter – Starmer’s shadow minister Wes Streeting has said he would hold the door to the English health service “wide open” to the private sector. A second cigarette paper could be deployed here.

You begin to more than suspect that somebody at Labour HQ has a checklist of where the Tory Party might train their electoral fire – and Sir Keir has ­obediently amended party policy to ­remove possible targets.

READ MORE: Review of the year 2023: What’s happened in Scottish politics

Thus we see the commitment to ­major investment in green policies now filed under “sometime, never” and a ­diktat to colleagues not to be seen to be supporting trades unions most especially during strike action.

As for the current tragedy in the ­Middle East? Whatever happened to the party which once preached humanity? Being appalled by the events of October 7 and being heartbroken by the carnage in Gaza and the West Bank are not mutually ­exclusive reactions.

Yet a car-crash interview on LBC found Sir Keir making the case for the defence of stopping food and aid supplies getting through, and taking a week to figure out that he was out of sync with the majority of the UK population.

So what all this boils down to for Scots voters at the next General Election if they set their face against independence – and the polls suggest at least half the ­country have not – is a “choice” between two Unionist technocrats, both of whom seem to lack sufficient imagination to relate to ordinary punters.

For Rishi Sunak presides – if that’s the appropriate verb – over a Cabinet which, by common consent, is a byword for ­incompetence. His latest poll rating in the Conservative Home monthly chart is a ­dismal minus 26.5, with his ­Chancellor romping home at minus 16.9. The ­current chart-topper is Kemi ­Badenoch – ­presumably because most of the ­electorate know next to nothing about her.

Despite launching more resets than the average wonky timepiece, the current PM has proved that whilst he may be a whizz at spreadsheets and making oodles of money for himself, he’s a pretty ropey ­politician. The smart money is on his beating a hasty retreat to California if he gets his jotters.

Only a chap with minimal electoral ­vision would think it a bright idea to ­cancel a new fast rail link to Manchester at a Tory Party conference held in that self-same city. Only a man without shame would garland that announcement with a solemn pledge to spend every penny of the savings on north of England travel ­options and then promise the same dosh to help fill in potholes in London and ­sundry other cities not noticeably in the south of that country.

You might have thought that post-Boris Johnson, post-Liz Truss, things could only get better. Time to think again, peeps.

Rishi tried, somewhat implausibly, to sell himself as the change candidate, a trick few could pull off, having sat around the same Cabinet table as the rest for 13 years before grasping the poisoned ­chalice himself.

I suspect here at home, Humza Yousaf will also find no less difficulty selling himself as the most likely instrument of change, given the length of time his ­party has been in power. He will need to ­convince erstwhile supporters that he can deliver a credible independence campaign which will not be a simple matter given the number of burned boats on the shore.

He will also have to acknowledge the fact that Scotland, and Scottish politics, will alter beyond recognition if and when we become fully independent. A rainbow nation, if you like, where all shades of opinion will be represented by all manner of alliances.

In short, if you want to rise and be a state again voting for a Unionist party is hardly the way to go.

We are no less a diverse nation in terms of instincts and prejudices than any other small country.

The still-new First Minister faces a stiff test in the upcoming elections. Yet Yousaf is manifestly a decent bloke, as his ­dignified stance over a Gazan ­ceasefire ­illustrated. He has also gone out of his way, to prove his credentials as a First Minister for all faiths and none, as ­witness his instinctive visit to a synagogue post-October 7 when his own in-laws were still trapped in a warzone.

What the future will bring his party, and his country, is still to be determined, as is his own. Much mud will be slung in the upcoming months as the Unionist commentariat takes every opportunity to diss our country, our politics, and our ­parliament.

I’m inclined to take the Michelle ­Obama line on all of this. When they go low, we go high, she urged supporters. It’s difficult to hold to that thought when ­opponents line up to whip up needless fears as we saw during the 2014 campaign.

There will be more, much more of that. There will be Labour folk saying only they can vanquish the Tory dragon. Not so. We are a centuries-old nation, with ­resources in abundance, both ­material and ­human. We can not only lose ­Conservative ­governments, mend fences with Europe, and welcome much-needed New Scots, but we can regain our national self-respect.

As the campaign slogan has it: Believe in Scotland! You know it makes sense.