Scottish Labour MPs will always put their London leaders first

No matter what sound bites the “chief” of the Scottish branch office contrives to dupe the Scottish public, the truth is that Scottish Labour MPs will obey “Sir Keir”.

Only seven Labour MPs had the personal integrity to vote in favour of the SNP motion to prioritise scrapping the policy that sustains “the rape clause”, and regrettably not one of them was a Scottish MP.

Only one Scottish Labour MP did not vote against the SNP amendment to the King’s Speech aimed at scrapping the two-child benefit cap, and that MP effectively abstained.

In the meantime, “Whaur’s Anas” is the cry as the branch office “chief”, not renowned for being camera-shy, appears to have gone into hiding in spite of his seeming compulsion to seize every opportunity to arrogantly spout vacuous statements to anyone within listening distance, never mind Labour Party acolytes eager to attempt to justify often misleading criticisms of the Scottish Government.

When Mr Sarwar is finally tracked down by one of the large team of intrepid Reporting Scotland journalists, hopefully he will be pushed to meaningfully answer the pivotal question “what is the purpose of ‘Scottish Labour’”.

The people of Scotland do not want to hear more clever sound bites – they want child poverty to be eradicated now, not perhaps in 10 years’ time by the end of a second term of a Labour government at Westminster.

Stan Grodynski

Longniddry, East Lothian

SINCE the General Election, there have been many comments from SNP sources (present MSPs and past MPs, mostly) calling for a period of reflection prior to the formulation of plans, thus to turn things around for the Holyrood Election in 2026.

In this there is a tacit understanding that the reflection and fix is in the gift of the SNP themselves. But they’ve been on the park for years, and have yet to score. So isn’t it time that somebody else had a wee shot o’ the ba’?

An alternative team should start immediate training, in readiness for 2026.

In 2014, 1,617,989 individuals (which admittedly included 16- and 17-year-olds) voted Yes, but only 710,400 individuals were minded to vote SNP in the General Election just past.

The difference of nearly one million crystalises the current lack of engagement with the SNP and the potential signings for an alternative team; hopefully more.

Scotland has demonstrated in the past that it can rise for a cause. Apart from the independence referendum campaign itself, two million signed the National Covenant in 1949 and Billy Graham’s “All Scotland” crusade in 1955 was attended by 2.5m people.

It appears to me that the “alternative team” to be fielded is that managed by Business in Scotland (BiS) via its proposed Scottish Citizens’ Convention. It is unaligned, so everyone can be engaged, leaving any old disagreements behind them.

The issues that sunk the 2014 campaign – pensions, currency, etc – can be addressed and settled once and for all.

Common Weal and the Scottish Currency Group have already done a lot of work on these and other such issues – this work should be captured, but also groups of randomly selected citizens can be set to work on potential stumbling blocks, in the way that Irish Citizens’ Assemblies tackled and solved challenging constitutional questions.

This new push has every chance of mobilising a good majority of Scottish voters (60%+ hopefully) to vote appropriately in 2026.

But for whom are these individuals to vote? For a refreshed SNP which agrees to adopt the BiS convention output as its manifesto?

Or maybe, more radically, for a newly constituted Scotland Party which co-opts those existing SNP MSPs who are minded to join, plus other big-hitters such as Cherry, Whitford, Flynn and maybe even Riddoch?!

Ken Gow

Banchory

IT was interesting to read Joanna Cherry’s article in yesterday’s paper about the need for reform in the SNP. To many of your readers and correspondents, this has been obvious for some time.

It doesn’t seem that the hierarchy of the SNP read your columns but are more likely to try not to offend readers of the Unionist press than pay cognition to views expressed.

The current SNP setup reminds me of a bowling club/golf club committee, where committee members are of long-standing and not open to new thinking from ordinary members.

Any ideas or suggestions of change are seen as a threat to the standing of the current committee and must be resisted. Thus the club may be declining but the committee ignores everything to preserve its perceived standing.

This has been the attitude displayed by the SNP bosses in recent years to policy suggestions from branches or members and must change or membership will further decline.

Of course, that’s of no importance as long as the heidyins remain in post.

On current track, it is almost certain that the SNP get an electoral bloody nose in 2026 and nothing is being done to avert this. The independence movement is being set back 50 years by the way things have been done in the past decade or so and I no longer see independence coming to be fact in my lifetime.

A rebuild of the independence movement is required, with or without leadership by the SNP. The current SNP are in a position similar to that of Redmond’s Irish Party during the First World War, waiting to be eclipsed.

Drew Reid

Falkirk