KEIR Starmer has announced major UK Government investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects. The Westminster government will invest £22 billion in the plan, and yet again Scotland has been snubbed.

CCS is a controversial technology which has been criticised by environmental campaigners as a means of prolonging the life of the fossil fuel industries. The aim is to extract carbon from emissions at the source and to store it long-term under the sea in depleted oil and gas fields.

Starmer announced the funding for CCS projects in Merseyside and Cleveland, but nothing has been promised for the Acorn project in Buchan, leaving its future uncertain.

The funding announced today has been exclusively allocated to so-called Track 1 carbon capture projects, leaving projects like Acorn, classified as Track 2, to await a possible future funding round which may or may not take place.

The Acorn project has been promised British Government funding for a decade, but it has failed to materialise and now the Buchan project has been passed over a third time.

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The project had been promised £1bn in funding from the then Conservative government during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum campaign only for the promised funding to be withdrawn in 2015 after the No vote was safely in the bag. In July 2023, then prime minister Rishi Sunak visited the site and again pledged UK Government support for the project, but no funding materialised. Now, the Scottish site has been passed over once again.

SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn denounced the snub saying: "This really isn’t that hard – if you want economic growth, if you want to create jobs, if you want to develop a domestic supply chain, and if you want to hit Net Zero then you invest in the Acorn project.

"For years we’ve been waiting for the Tories to back this project and despite offering ‘change’ the Labour Government have followed the same path by prioritising projects in the North of England, choosing not even to mention the Scottish cluster.

“We’ve seen with Grangemouth what happens when you don’t invest in the energy transition and, at this point, Labour looks desperate to repeat those mistakes with their absurd tax changes and failure to invest in CCUS here in the North-east."

There's a definite pattern here. Scotland is promised all sorts of goodies by Westminster parties when they are seeking Scottish votes, but the moment those votes are cast the promises are wheeched away. How many times does this have to happen for people in Scotland to wise up to the Westminster bait and snatch game?

A spokesperson for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) insisted the funding in Merseyside and Teesside “is just the start”.

He added: “We will have more to say in in the coming months about the next steps for carbon capture in Humberside, Scotland and elsewhere around the country.” The bait and snatch game, round four.

Starmer continues to wear his entitlement on the sleeve of the expensive suit given to him by his rich pal. Earlier this week Starmer agreed to repay £6000 worth of gifts he received but insists that this is not an admission that he was wrong to accept the gifts in the first place.

Starmer has also said he would not be urging his fellow Cabinet members to hand back their post-election freebies and dodged a question on whether he needed to look at the way politics was funded following the row about political donations.

Starmer is reimbursing the cost of six Taylor Swift tickets, four tickets to the races and a clothing rental agreement with a high-end designer favoured by his wife, Lady Victoria Starmer. These represent just a tiny fraction of the total value of gifts accepted by Starmer since 2019.

The reason this row is so damaging is because Labour was elected on a promise to clean up politics and while in opposition rightly condemned the willingness of Conservative politicians and ministers to accept gifts and donations allegedly in return for access to the corridors of power. Yet Starmer now stands accused of behaving exactly the same as the Tories he criticised thus combining sleaze with rank hypocrisy.

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The row is not going away, it was reported on Thursday evening that Labour’s commercial team had offered company chiefs a chance to “gain insight” with Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds in return for £30,000. They're not even trying to hide their demands for cash for access.

After the story came to light, Reynolds said he would not be attending and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband claimed that the event had been organised without Reynolds' knowledge. But surely if the Labour Party was trying to get businesses to pay thousands to attend a meeting with a minister that the minister didn't know about then it could be alleged that the party was attempting to obtain money under false pretences. Miliband has insisted that no such events will take place in the future, so that's alright then.

According to Open Democracy, Reynolds accepted valuable gifts from Google in the days before abandoning a plan to tax digital giants more. Reynolds, his senior parliamentary assistant (who is also his wife), and Starmer’s political director all attended Glastonbury Festival in June as guests of YouTube, which is owned by Google. Including accommodation and hospitality.

The freebie Glastonbury package for two was worth £3377 – significantly more than the cost of two regular tickets, which were £335 each. The next day, reports emerged that Labour had ditched its proposal to hike tax on digital businesses like Google.

Entirely coincidentally, of course. Reynolds is just blessed by kind philanthropists who want nothing in return for their freebies.

Following the SNP victory in two council by elections in Dundee, including taking one seat from Labour, we are waiting with baited breath for the BBC Scotland headline on the story,no doubt something along the lines of "SNP narrowly avoids defeat in two council by elections." Labour is imploding, far more quickly than anyone could have anticipated.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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