Election of 37 Scottish Labour MPs has been a disaster for Scotland

The National

5 days ago

With the commendable exception of Brian Leishman, these Scottish MPs have toed the London-orchestrated party line and remained silent while Scotland has been stitched-up. Pensioners, children, Waspi women, the disabled and the poor have been denied the support one would expect of a purportedly socialist party while, contrary to the rhetoric, the 'good deals' on industrial infrastructure have been committed to projects in England without comparable investment in Scotland to benefit the workers of this country.
READ MORE: Brian Leishman: 'Anas Sarwar hasn't spoken to me in 6 months'
The Acorn carbon capture and storage project in Scotland was set to go ahead, yet £22 billion was committed by the [[UK Government]] to nascent projects in England while Acorn and Scottish Cluster partners have been advised they may receive a token amount of around £200 million in development funding. This same relatively paltry amount of around 200 £million is what may be paid out by the [[UK Government]] 'to support the area's economic transition' while the Grangemouth refinery is shut down and hundreds of workers lose their jobs; yet the same Labour [[UK Government]] immediately committed to maintaining operations at the loss-making Lindsey oil refinery while refusing to reveal the cost to taxpayers. This follows [[UK Government]] funding of £2.5bn to keep Scunthorpe's British Steel plant open.
As if this continued heavily distorted UK infrastructure investment wasn't bad enough for Scotland, the Labour Party have rowed back from repealing the Tory's Internal Market Act, which further restricts the already limited powers of the Scottish Government. To add insult to injury, we now learn that the Secretary of State for Scotland, Ian Murray (aka Starmer's Scottish poodle), has the audacity to claim he has no role in delivering devolution deals for Scottish cities as disingenuous justification for Glasgow and Edinburgh not receiving the funding provided by the [[UK Government]] for City Deals in England.
READ MORE: Anas Sarwar silent as Brian Leishman thrown out of Labour
Regarding my own Lothian East MP, it appears that he learned nothing from his complicity as a [[UK Government]] minister in the illegal invasion of Iraq, and by his relative silence he is now despicably complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank. Neither Douglas Alexander, nor the [[Labour Party]], speaks for me or for the vast majority of the people of Scotland. In the 2026 Holyrood election it is important that everyone who believes in democracy and cares for the futures of our children to grow up, study, live and prosper in Scotland, gets out and votes for a party that will speak up for the right of the people of Scotland to determine their own future via the directly elected Scottish Parliament.
Stan Grodynski
Longniddry, East Lothian
I WOULD have had some respect for Thom Cross's Long Letter (Jul 16) if he had said objectively only the SNP WILL win independence rather than CAN win independence.
However, without some clear Damascene policy strategic and tactical revelation, I'm sorry, but I am not going to vote for this contemporary SNP as I have done in the past.
Sadly not only are they not listening to the message, they stoically refuse to even hear it.
It's going to take a major reversal for them to get with the indy support, and a drubbing at the polls again next year may well deliver it. And all this does is force the campaign further down the road, which seems to be game they are playing.
READ MORE: Legal rights without enforcement are merely political ornaments
I also don't understand where Thom Cross is coming from by seeking to persuade us Scotland is not a colony. The very existence of the Scottish Secretary of State who oversees us, and operates outwith the elected authority of the Scottish Parliament, is nothing less than a Westminster-appointed High Commissioner, that kowtowing British empire power symbol despised by the 60 former colonies that turned their backs on the empire for their independence, none of which begged to be suborned by Westminster rule again. Refusal to recognise our colonial status merely proves how successfully the propaganda has worked.
Scotland will never be independent unless it creates a constitutional crisis – supported by hopefully peaceful direct action, as in Gandhi's leadership example – and this SNP have shown they just won't deliver it.
Swinney is clearly hoping somehow indy will happen and his party can claim the credit for it, but won't force the issue. He is not prepared to poke the bear that needs poking.
READ MORE: Will John Swinney surprise us with a courageous election manifesto?
Scotland allegedly entered into a partnership in 1707, taken there by a small minority of self-interested traitors who allowed the English power to con us, with dissent crushed by the British (English) army. However that treaty is superior to the Scotland Act. Resile from the treaty and the Scotland Act is irrelevant.
We have a democratically elected parliament, just the vehicle to reassert our authority. What we don't have is an SNP leadership prepared to step out of their establishment comfort zone to make it happen. The 2026 election is the ideal opportunity to set the agenda. Just one issue. Independence. Ignore the media onslaught on the SNP's record, good or bad. Use social media and street protests to drive the independence agenda.
But it has to be declared from now. The argument has to be made clearly to push support higher.
The alternative is to remain as a colony served by a High Commissioner about to waste money to develop the nuclear weapons base that imperils Scots like canon fodder and the English avoid because we let them. Choice stolen from us.
We have to tell them we reject Ian Murray in his High Commissioner status, we reject his nuclear weapons and we reject his colonial British empire wannabe Westminster government.
Independence NOW!
Jim Taylor
Scotland