EVERY week when I sit down to write this column, I promise myself it will be about something other than that carcass of what was once the Labour Party. Every week I have been forced by some new betrayal to break that promise. This week, of course, is no exception.

I’ve been trying to work out why I am so angry about the Labour since the election. It can’t be that they have turned their back on all the principles upon which the party was founded. That happened years ago.

It can’t be that they so completely snuffed out the briefly rekindled hope that, by electing Jeremy Corbyn, Labour had rediscovered their sense of purpose and radical roots. That was never really on the cards.

It can’t be just because it so blindly followed America into its illegal war in Iraq. Even I have to admit that was a very long time ago.

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Yet there is something so infuriating about watching as Keir Starmer spouts one nonsensical policy announcement after another that simply drives me to distraction. The man has the biggest political brass neck seen for decades.

Until recently I believed that Scotland was done with Labour. I thought we had been ignored for too long, that the faith we had placed in the party to protect us from Tory avarice had been too often revealed as misplaced. That, even if we were not yet wholly convinced of the benefits of independence, we were sure that Labour were the answer to none of the problems that plague us.

And yet, so desperate were we to be rid of the Tories that we were tricked into giving them one last chance to prove themselves worthy of carrying our hopes for the future. It’s not simply that Labour have squandered those hopes, it is that Starmer has done it so blatantly, and with not a backward glance and not a tinge of regret.

He does not even have the grace to appear humbled as he promises to pay back £6000 of the far, far larger total value of gifts and donations he has accepted from rich pals while we struggle to pay soaring bills in the cost of living crisis.

If you expected an apology from the Prime Minister, you clearly have not been paying attention to the values that drive this man. Even as he agrees to hand back some of the cash he stresses he was within his rights to accept it. Rather than blame himself for the whole sorry mess he points instead to the lack of proper rules governing what gifts can and cannot be accepted.

His solution? To commission “a new set of principles on gifts and hospitality to be published as part of the updated ministerial code”. Given that these principles are not yet established he’s decided it’s only right to pay back (some of) the cash. Just to be on the safe side.

The timing of the announcement, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the revelation that the Lord standards watchdog has launched an investigation of Labour donor and peer Waheed Alli. Alli has previously given Starmer £32,000 of workwear, multiple pairs of glasses worth £2400 and the use of a £18 million penthouse.

Starmer has the cheek to include the new principles he has been bounced into the “change” agenda used by Labour as part of their election campaign.

The change voters really want to see is well-paid politicians promising never to accept freebies such as designer clothing and Taylor Swift tickets which they can afford to pay for themselves while denying thousands of pensioners relatively small winter fuel payments to help them meet soaring heating bills.

By rights, Starmer’s controversies should rebound on the much-hyped Scottish Labour “revival”, which is probably why Scottish leader Anas Sarwar’s mouth has remained resolutely closed on the gifts and donations row. Sarwar has accepted some gifts himself, notably rugby tickets and hospitality worth around £5000 but that pales into insignificance next to Starmer’s haul. Sarwar’s voice has been similarly absent over Starmer’s staunch support for Israel on display this week after Iran’s missile attack on Tel Aviv.

The Prime Minister’s support of Israel’s “right to defend itself” against Iran’s “unacceptable aggression” is hardly in line with the opinion of many Scots unhappy with Israel’s attack on innocent civilians in Gaza.

SARWAR has been critical of his leader’s statements on Gaza, saying last year that Starmer’s suggestion that Israel was right to cut off water and energy to Gaza “hurt Muslims” and “all peace-loving people”.

It was certainly a very different take than that adopted by Scotland’s then first minister Humza Yousaf, whose in-laws were trapped for a time in Gaza.

It was criticised this week by Richard McNeil-Willson, lecturer in the Islamic and Middle Eastern studies department at Edinburgh University, who said: “Israel has a right to self-defence, but Lebanon does not? Israelis have the right to be safe, but Palestinians do not? Iran can’t launch missiles into civilian areas, but Israel can? None of this is coherent.”

But then Scotland has slipped down the Labour leader’s priorities since the party’s General Election victory. The country was deemed worthy of just two mentions in Starmer’s speech at the party’s conference. Hardly evidence to back his claim this summer that Scotland was “back at the beating heart” of his government.

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Instead, Scottish cities are still waiting to learn if so-called “levelling up” cash promised by the last UK government will now be delivered.

The 10th anniversary of the independence referendum threw into sharp relief how far away we are from benefitting from the promises made by the Unionist parties during the Better Together campaign.

It’s far from clear how committed Starmer is even to maintaining even the very limited powers given to the Scottish Government by devolution. He’s more concerned that Scotland is somehow gaming the system by taking its own decisions on, for example, free tuition fees for students. The vultures are certainly circling over devolution. Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch this week promised major changes to the devolution settlement if she should ever become minister.

Given her views on maternity pay (“excessive”) you would not be confident that the changes she’s planning will be beneficial.

You don’t need to look for to see the advantages independence could bring to Scotland. Here are just some of the measures introduce introduced in the Irish budget for 2025:

  • Double payments for some social welfare recipients in October
  • A €12 increase for those receiving the weekly Social Protection payment
  • An energy credit of €250 for all households to be paid in two equal payments, one before the end of 2024 and one after
  • A proposal for a 9% reduction in VAT for gas and electricity to be extended for another six months to 30 April 2025
  • A further €300 lump sum payment to fuel allowance recipients in November
  • An additional €200 for recipients of the living alone allowance

Here in the good old UK, Keir Starmer’s government is busily embarking on austerity cuts which the SNP described as representing “Truss levels of economic vandalism”.

My rage at the Labour Party isn’t just because it is engaged in yet another doomed austerity programme while at the same time pretending they have ruled out more austerity. It’s not just because Labour and their Better Together partners duped Scottish voters into believing independence would be an economic disaster when it is now the architect of yet more cuts we pay for while its leader is treated to unimaginable riches donated by his rich pals.

It’s because Labour are already talking confidently about winning the Scottish election in 2026 in a way that suggests it believes voters can’t see through its lies and hypocrisy. No change from the last time Labour won significant support in Scotland.

The SNP are the only party that can realistically scupper Labour’s plans. That will require, strategy, imagination and determination. Round about now it would be nice to see evidence of those.