Starmer's time will be up if he fails to address two crucial issues

The Herald Scotland

18 hours ago

Labour's by-election win wasn't a shock: it was a lottery. Davy Russell was, of course, elected under the first-past-the-post system, which works perfectly well when there are only two main candidates. But that's no longer the case and hasn't been for a long time.
Westminster MPs are elected in the same way and our current Labour government has the benefit of a massive majority from only 34% of the vote on the second lowest turnout in almost 100 years. The Electoral Reform Society calculated that 28.8 million people voted and 27.5 million eligible to vote did not: almost the same amount. That in effect, is a 17% endorsement for Labour and certainly not representative.
John Milne ("For many, politics isn't working") hits the nail on the head when he writes that 'politics in our country is not working for a significant element of our population' and warns of 'the inequalities and injustices in our society and economy'.
UK politics isn't working, firstly, because the UK electoral system is so unrepresentative and, secondly, because of the widening gap between the wealthy and poor of our society that our politicians seem unable or. more likely, unwilling to correct.
I should be a natural Labour supporter but the party led by Sir Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar bears little resemblance to its founding principles. Evidently, many others feel the same and are turning to Reform UK in protest and, possibly, in the vain hope that its offer of change will work.
Keir Starmer could fix the first problem by changing our undemocratic voting system. But if he continues to bury his head in the sand against the wishes of the majority of his party members, he might as well start writing his political obituary now.
David Bruce, Troon.
Read more letters:
Why Labour should focus on the SNP
Dr Gerald Edwards (letter, June 7) is mistaken that Reform were 'the real winners' and not Labour. who turned round a huge SNP majority and succeeded despite Reform splitting the vote.
The winner is my old friend, Davy Russell, who heads off to Holyrood having fought a highly old-fashioned and much-derided campaign. He faced the public and convinced them that he could be trusted. He also made various so-called expert political commentators look very foolish.
It was a disaster for the SNP by any measure, particularly since they marched into the count, chests out and totally confident of victory. It was a humiliation for the First Minister but Dr Edwards is correct to say that it was a very good result for Reform.
However one major point is that both Unionist parties jointly polled over double the SNP vote. This was a very significant rejection of the SNP and their failures of the last 18 years.
I've had various letters in the Herald forecasting the rise of Reform and the mistake of ridiculing them and disparaging Mr Farage. That won't help, and will only encourage people who are disillusioned to vote for them.
Labour needs to focus on defeating SNP in Scotland and let Reform do their worst – best not to give them credibility.
On a personal level I've known Davy for many years and can only pray that more genuine local candidates are pushed forward by Labour to ensure we can gain power at the Scottish elections next year.
John Gilligan, Ayr.
SNP's urgent priorities now
The lesson from the Hamilton by-election result for the SNP is to let Labour and the Tories fight it out with Reform UK to represent the dwindling number of myopically indoctrinated supporters of the Union.
The SNP must also focus on the critical argument that only independence can bring about a radical 'change in direction' for the UK through the constitutional change necessary to seriously address the fundamental problems confronting "broken Brexit Britain".
The lesson for John Swinney is that it is now urgent that he arouse the passion and vigour for independence quietly dormant within him, or step aside, at least from the leadership of the SNP, and support an individual who can inspiringly lead the country to independence before the end of this decade.
A majority of MSPs supporting independence in the next Scottish election must represent a mandate for the Scottish Parliament to hold a binding constitutional referendum which, if denied by the UK government, must legitimately underpin making the next General Election a 'de facto referendum' on independence.
A majority of votes at the Scottish election must represent a mandate to commence independence negotiations should the UK government fail, over a maximum period of one year, to pass legislation enabling the Scottish Parliament to hold constitutional referenda.
Manifestos of the SNP and the other independence parties should state both these commitments and the necessary actions that will follow should a resultant mandate be met with continued undemocratic intransigence by the UK government.
Further procrastination by the UK government on implementing the democratically expressed wishes of the people of Scotland must not be accepted. To paraphrase the currently popular words of the Roman general, Vegetius, if you want true democracy, prepare to fight cynical totalitarianism.
Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian.
No rest for the Hamilton voters
I think it was Harold Wilson who said that a week is a long time in politics. He of course was right – and what a week we have seen in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse.
First, we had the First Minister of Scotland claiming that only the SNP can beat Reform and stating that Labour cannot win here. Then we had Reform and Nigel Farage having to defend a campaign video condemned by rivals as 'blatantly racist', followed by Farage accusing Sarwar of introducing sectarianism into Scottish politics. Meanwhile, the voters who deliver the final verdict get on with their lives, thinking 'what have we done to deserve all of this?'
The final verdict was delivered by the people who rejected Farage and Reform, rejected Swinney and the SNP and plumped for the local hero Davy Russell and Scottish Labour.
I have to give huge credit to Anas Sarwar for his dignified response to Farage and Reform and his noble response to the SNP, which cosied up to Reform by attempting to give them credibility by describing the election as a two-horse race between them. The residents of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse will be relieved that it is only a week that is a long time in politics as they get back to a bit of normality – forgetting it starts all over again in the first week of May 2026.
Willie Young, Aberdeen.
Time for Swinney to jack it in
In his interview on BBC Scotland's The Sunday Show, John Swinney was still touchingly clinging to the independence panacea, citing polls claiming 54% support.
That doesn't stack up with the Hamilton result. On a turnout of 44% the SNP got 30% of the votes – that's only 14% of the total electorate. Applying these numbers to the 4.3m voters of Scotland, their 2014 Indyref total of 1.6m votes plummets by one million to around 600,000.
Come on John, you know it's over, so why not publicly announce you've jacked it in? Then Holyrood 2026 can be about which party has the best policies and candidates to halt the nosedive in our health, education, worklessness, Net Zero and public services.
Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven.
Sarwar was embarrassing
Martin Geissler acquitted himself well in his Sunday Show interview with Labour's Anas Sarwar.
But that is more than could be said for Sarwar, who was unsatisfactory.
He rattled off criticisms of the SNP (not all of them undeserved) but when it came to defending Labour's record in office, its policies and its U-turns he spoke very quickly and without much in the way of conviction.
Asked how Labour could put more money into people's pockets, he outlined, in the space of a few seconds, various measures but declined to elaborate and then quickly detoured into the NHS, Swinney and Farage. Geissler tried to pin him down but Sarwar didn't seem to listen to the questions that a hard-pressed electorate deserves serious responses to.
Were I a Labour voter I would be embarrassed by Sarwar's painfully thin and cliched answers.
S. McArthur, Glasgow.