Scottish independence will save us from fantasy land

THERE will be a Westminster general election this year, and it looks like we’re in for a very long campaign. 

Last week Rishi Sunak signalled that he's looking at an election in the second half of the year. Given the woeful polling performance of the Conservatives over the last 18 months, Sunak is likely to seek to delay the election as long as possible in the hope that something might crop up which will help the Tories avoid electoral annihilation. 

When he became Prime Minister, Sunak sought to restore his party's fortunes by posing as the Prime Minister who represented change, despite his party being in power for 13 years. He attempted to achieve this by pretending that he had had nothing whatsoever to do with previous Conservative administrations, even those in which he'd held senior cabinet positions. 

Not even the fawning right-wing press was going to swallow that guff, and it's a mark of just how lazily arrogant the Conservatives are that it was ever adopted as a strategy. 

During his first major campaign event of the year – and we’ve got much more of this sort of shameless mendacity to come in the months ahead - Sunak pivoted slightly to claim that his party is delivering change, and a Labour government would reset the changes that the Tories are implementing. 

Sunak's problem is that the changes he claims his government is delivering are changes for the worse. The Tories have changed England's rivers into open sewers, they've changed what was once a social security system into a social destitution system, even for households in work. NHS England is plagued by strikes and teeters on the verge of collapse. 

Meanwhile, the rich grow ever richer and many in Sunak's party seek to widen inequality even further by cutting or even abolishing inheritance tax, a move which would benefit the wealthiest even as the Institute for Fiscal Studies warns that Britain's finances are in a 'parlous state.' When public services are starved of funding, tax cuts for millionaires should not even be considered, never mind presented as a priority. 

But Sunak inhabits a fantasy world in which everything in Britain is just marvelous and we are invited to ignore the evidence of our own eyes and ears. 

This is a government which lies shamelessly and blatantly, safe in the knowledge that the media will never hold it to account and the sclerotic Westminster Parliament is incapable of doing so. 

Starmer won’t deliver change 

Talking of fantasy politics, Anas Sarwar, the manager of Labour's Scottish Accounting Unit, has appealed to Scottish independence supporters to vote Labour at the next Westminster General Election. 

Sarwar claims that voters are "hungry for change" and urges people to vote Labour to give the party "the opportunity to show you that we can make the UK work for every corner of our country." 

We all know what's in it for Sarwar if independence supporters vote Labour, but Sarwar noticeably fails to explain what is in it for independence supporters. In essence his argument boils down to - forget about this independence nonsense because Labour will prove there's no need for it. 

The big problem here is that while voters may be “hungry for change”, Keir Starmer is not the man who is going to deliver it. Starmer has indeed changed the Labour party, but he has changed it into a right-wing pro-Brexit English nationalist party in the mould of the Tories, a party which wraps itself in the British flag while hypocritically claiming to oppose nationalism.

However, the real problem is that Starmer's Labour party will do absolutely nothing about introducing and implementing the radical reform that the broken Westminster system so desperately needs. At best there will be some minor tinkering with the offence to democracy that is the House of Lords. Labour will do nothing at all to make the Westminster voting system fairer and more proportional. 

The absolute best that Labour can offer is a change in the personnel who are delivering Conservative policies, and when the political pendulum in England swings back to the Tories, as it inevitably will, Scotland will once again be powerless against a Tory party which is likely to be even more right wing than the current bunch. 

Sarwar does not offer change, at best his party offers a brief respite, the underlying disease of the Westminster system will remain untreated. 

Only independence can deliver the lasting change that Scotland really needs. 

Sarwar's party cannot offer that. Yet again, as those of us who are a bit longer in the tooth have seen all too often before, the Labour party is not interested in what it can do for Scotland, it is interested in what Scotland can do for the Labour party. 

The prize of independence 

Meanwhile, First Minister Humza Yousaf will kick off the SNP's Westminster general election campaign, arguing that the need for independence is urgent to address the economic situation the country faces as part of the UK. 

He argues that independence would raise living standards and productivity in Scotland, claiming Scottish families would be more than £10,000 better off outside the UK, which he called “the prize of independence”. 

He says that the Scottish Government must set out an alternative path for Scotland, one which takes the country back into the EU and creates a renewed sense of opportunity and possibility. 

He pointed to the examples of Ireland, Norway and Denmark as having both higher productivity and lower inequality than the UK, saying: "In other words, they combine economic dynamism with social solidarity.

"So, with all our strengths, the key question is this: Why not Scotland?"