Scotland (dis)graced with a visit from Labour and Reform UK

The National

2 days ago

SCOTLAND was (dis)graced on Monday with visits from two right-wing British nationalist party leaders preaching nostrums and claiming that only they can defeat the SNP in the Hamilton, Larkhall, and Stonehouse Holyrood by-election due to be held on Thursday.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer was speaking at the BAE Systems shipyard in Govan, Glasgow where his big announcement was warfare not welfare. Speaking to the BBC, Starmer insisted it was "right" to axe the universal Winter Fuel Payment for pensioners as he announced plans to build 12 new nuclear submarines, six new munitions factories, thousands more long-range weapons including missiles and drones, and will spend £15 billion on its nuclear warhead programme.
However, Starmer ducked questions about how all this was going to be paid for, although he predictably refused to countenance tax rises on the rich, insisting: "You can't tax your way to growth."
No doubt we will be in for yet more of those "tough choices" which are only ever tough on the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. It's also a racing certainty that Starmer's grand and headline grabbing announcement today will go the way of all his other grand and headline grabbing announcements and what will actually be delivered will be so heavily watered down that it will bear little resemblance to what he announced today.
In this instance that's perhaps not such a bad thing because if the UK really does need to boost its defence footprint it is in conventional defence, not the practically useless UK nuclear programme.
Starmer continued the usual Labour habit of hiding from the Scottish press, taking questions only from The Sun and The Courier, refusing to take a question from The National or any other Scottish publication.
Starmer will not be visiting the Hamilton, Larkhall, and Stonehouse Holyrood constituency to back his party's hapless candidate in this week's by-election, despite Starmer's assertion that only Labour can beat the SNP in the seat. It's another tacit admission that Labour has more or less thrown in the towel.
And another bare-faced liar in Aberdeen...
Meanwhile in Aberdeen another bare faced British nationalist liar was courting publicity. Nigel Farage was in the city to welcome another former Tory councillor to his party. Farage used the occasion to double down on his party's now infamous race-baiting social media advert targeted at voters in this week's Holyrood by election which falsely accused Labour's Scottish leader Anas Sarwar of saying he'd prioritise the Pakistani community. In Aberdeen, Farage out and out lied, asserting entirely baselessly that Anas Sarwar had made a speech in which he claimed the South Asian community are "going to take over the country and take over the world".
As evidence of Sarwar's supposed "obsession" with race, Farage referred to a speech made in Holyrood by Sarwar in 2020 in which he claimed that Sarwar had complained that all positions of power in Scotland are held by white people. Like in the speech made by Humza Yousaf during the same Holyrood debate, Sarwar was highlighting the paucity of minority ethnic representation in positions of authority in Scotland.
The speech to which Farage was referring made no references to how the South Asian community are "going to take over the country and take over the world". Farage made all that up. For once, BBC Scotland actually called out Farage's lies, but he predictably continued to double down.
The incident not merely illustrates the vile race-baiting nature of Farage's gutter politics, this wasn't a dog whistle to racists, it was a fog horn.
In another example of how out of touch and clueless Farage is when it comes to Scotland, he accused The Herald, an anti-independence newspaper which has recently carried a number of opinion pieces favourable to Reform UK, of helping to organise the protest by anti-racism campaigners which was held outside the venue where his press conference was taking place.
Of course, it's comfortable for Farage to assert that demonstrations against him are organised by "the elites." It plays into his fictitious outsider schtick. The reality is that the majority of people in Scotland don't need "the elites" to tell us to loath Farage, we have eyes and ears and are perfectly capable of being revolted by him and his politics all by ourselves.
Farage also hinted that he's prepared to scrap the Barnett formula which determines how much money is provided by Westminster in the annual block grant to Holyrood. Asked about whether he would get rid of the Barnett formula, Farage said the mechanism was 'out of date'.
He added: 'What I'd like to see is a Scottish Government that's able to raise a bit more of its own revenue and a Scottish economy that's actually got genuine growth and I don't believe that can happen without this sector [oil and gas] booming.
'I think, you know, the Barnett formula goes back to the 1970s. Is there an argument it should be looked at again? Of course there is.'
Farage also said that 'welfare dependency' would not be reduced by the UK Government's allocation to the Scottish Parliament this year.
Responding to Farage's comments, Labour's Anas Sarwar said: 'Today the chief clown Nigel Farage finally found his way to Scotland and showed just how totally out of touch with our country he is.
'Nigel Farage turned up, admitted he can't win the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election and pledged to cut funding for Scotland's NHS and public services.
'Nigel Farage is a dangerous clown and the people of Scotland see right through him.'
After speaking in Aberdeen, Farage headed to Hamilton to back his party's candidate in this week's by election. He was met by more protesters and ended up dodging the public and the press entirely.
People need to be perfectly clear, a vote for Reform is not a vote for anything new, disruptive, or ground changing. It's not a vote for working class representation.
It's a vote for Thatcherism on steroids and for Tories who left the Tory party because it wasn't cruel, nasty, and racist enough.