Minister pans Labour for 'shipping in' London councillor to run in Highlands
Labour have selected Eva Kestner to contest the Caithness, Sutherland and Ross seat next year despite her living around 650 miles away in Lewisham, where she works as a councillor.
It is the second time Anas Sarwar's party have selected her as a candidate for the area, after she ran in the General Election last year for the equivalent Westminster constituency.
Public Health Minister Maree Todd, who currently represents the area for the SNP, said the area did not deserve to be represented by "more of the Prime Minister's cronies".
READ MORE: What DWP powers to spy on bank accounts mean for you
She said: "Given Labour's disastrous start in Government, it's no surprise that no one from Caithness, Sutherland and Ross is willing to back Keir Starmer as a local Labour candidate.
'Labour has form on shipping London-based candidates in to Scotland, and it's no wonder.
"Labour is pulling out all the stops to support industry in England, but offering nothing for Scotland - particularly for my constituents in the Highlands.
'The people of the Highlands deserve real local champions – not more of the Prime Minister's cronies.'
The selection of Kestner by Sarwar's party came in for heavy criticism on social media.
Andrea Cowan, an SNP councillor in Rutherglen, questioned how the selection was acceptable after Scottish Labour accused the SNP of "parachuting" in Katy Loudon to contest the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election.
READ MORE: Tories demand John Swinney sacks SNP MSPs who backed Maggie Chapman
Loudon does not live in the constituency but does stay just over the border in Rutherglen. She is hoping to keep the seat in SNP hands following the tragic death of Christina McKelvie last month.
Cowan said on Twitter/X: "So, let's get this straight, a councillor from Lewisham, 650 miles from Caithness, is fine to stand for Labour in next year's Holyrood elections, but an experienced councillor from South Lanarkshire, standing in Hamilton is being parachuted in?"
Last year, Labour were accused of "parachuting in paper candidates" as Kestner was among a raft of General Election picks based south of the Border.
After Wilma Brown was removed as a candidate in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath following an outcry over "racist" social media posts, Melanie Ward ran in her place despite living in London.
The party's candidate in Angus and Perthshire Glens was Elizabeth Carr-Ellis, who was a councillor based more than 500 miles away in the city of Canterbury, in Kent.
Some of the other candidates from south of the Border who ran for Labour last year include Conor Savage who was selected to contest Orkney and Shetland despite living in Edinburgh. He previously stood in Bangor for Plaid Cymru.
After being asked by The National why a London councillor had been chosen to run in the Caithness, Sutherland and Ross seat, a Scottish Labour spokesperson said Kestner grew up in Scotland and had previously worked in the Highlands and Islands.
They said: 'The SNP has failed the Highlands and Islands for too long, but in 2026 we can choose a change in direction with Scottish Labour.
'All Scottish Labour candidates are democratically selected by local members and this candidates will be a fantastic champion for the communities where she is standing.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
30 minutes ago
- The Independent
Britons ‘better learn to speak Russian' without major defence spending hike, Nato chief warns
British people 'better learn to speak Russian' if Sir Keir Starmer does not massively ramp up defence spending, the Nato secretary general has warned. Mark Rutte said he was 'really impressed' by the prime minister 's strategic defence review unveiled last week. And he called for Nato countries to set a 'credible path' towards spending 5 per cent of their national incomes on defence amid the growing threat from Russia. Speaking at London's Chatham House, Mr Rutte said it is 'not up to me' whether that means Rachel Reeves should consider tax hikes to pay for the commitment. He added: 'I mean, what I know is that if we want to keep our societies safe... look, if you do not do this, if you would not go to the 5%, including the 3.5% core defence spending, you could still have the National Health Service, or in other countries their health systems, the pension system, etcetera, but you had better learn to speak Russian.' He did not set out a deadline by which Nato countries will have to reach the 5 per cent target, more than double what the UK currently spends on defence. 'I have a clear view on when we should achieve that,' he said. But he added: 'I keep that to myself, because we are having these consultations now with allies, and these discussions are ongoing, and we will in the end agree on a date when we have to be there.' His plans would see a return to Cold War levels of defence spending, with Russia's war on Ukraine still raging and rising tensions around the world. Nato chief Mr Rutte is in London to see Sir Keir ahead of a Nato summit in the Netherlands this month. The visit comes just days after the PM promised to make Britain 'battle ready', outlining Labour's plans to overhaul the country's defence capabilities. Defence secretary John Healey meanwhile said Britain's army needed to become '10 times more lethal' in the face of the 'immediate and pressing threat" from Russia and the rise of China. 'We are in a new era of threat, which demands a new era for UK defence,' he told MPs. But the announcement descended into a row over funding, with Sir Keir refusing to commit to hiking defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2034. The PM was boosted on monday as Mr Rutte said the his plans to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence from April 2027, with an aim to rise to 3 per cent over the next parliament, were not at odds with his own proposed target for the bloc. The 5 per cent goal is not "some figure plucked from the air", he said. "The fact is we need a quantum leap in our defence. The fact is we must have more forces and capability to implement our defence plans in full." While he said the "exact details are classified", Mr Rutte said there needed to be a 400 per cent increase in air and missile defence. He said Russia could be ready to use force against Nato within five years. "The new generation of Russian missiles travel at many times the speed of sound. The distance between European capitals is only a matter of minutes. There is no longer east or west. There is just Nato." As he met with Sir Keir in the White Room of No 10, he commended the Prime Minister on the "very good stuff" in the defence review. "It is not only about the traditional things, of course we need them, like ammunition... there is also drones, innovation, building the defence industrial base. It is really broad, it is really making a big impression in Brussels I can tell you," he said. Sir Keir called Nato the "cornerstone of our defence" and the "most effective military alliance the world has ever seen", adding that the task of the upcoming summit was to make sure it serves that purpose for decades to come. Sir Keir also spoke to German chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday and the two leaders welcomed efforts by Nato allies to step up defence spending as well as Mr Rutte's suggestions to further boost it, a Downing Street spokeswoman said. The boost to the defence budget announced last week will be confirmed by chancellor Ms Reeves in her spending review on Wednesday, when she will set out the government's priorities for the next three years.
The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Public perceptions of Starmer and Farage are perhaps a bit hazy
The optics could hardly be more different. On one stage, Nigel Farage was in a Welsh former steel town talking about reopening coalmines. On another, Keir Starmer enjoyed a cosy chat with a tech multi-billionaire wearing a £7,000 leather jacket. Does this therefore show that the Reform UK leader has been successful in, to use his words, parking his tanks on Labour's lawn and becoming the voice of working people? As ever in politics, it's all a bit more complicated. For one thing, Starmer is not exactly a stranger to the factory floor. Little more than a week ago, he used a glass plant in St Helens, Merseyside, as the backdrop for a speech condemning Reform's fiscal plans. Recent months have seen him pop up at car production lines, armaments companies, rail infrastructure depots, you name it. Additionally, as prime minister you need to take every industry seriously, and it made sense for Starmer to open London tech week alongside Jensen Huang, even if the head of US semiconductor firm Nvidia is a man whose trademark look is a Tom Ford leather jacket. The complications work both ways. For all that Farage used his speech in Port Talbot to deliver a Donald Trump-like message of fossil fuel-led reindustrialisation, his natural milieu involves a bit less dirt under the fingernails. To take one example, on Monday Farage briefly mentioned being in Las Vegas two weeks ago 'launching our crypto and digital assets bill', when he was in fact a guest speaker at the lavish Bitcoin 2025 conference. It is not known if Farage was being paid for the appearance, but he is no stranger to corporate gigs. Since becoming an MP he has trousered £40,000 for a speech to an offshore taxation conference, and £280,000 promoting gold bullion, not to mention a TV job that pays about £2,500 per hour. And yet, in a poll released last week, it emerged that slightly more British voters think Farage – a public school-educated former City trader – is more working class than Starmer, who is, as we heard many times during the general election, the son of a toolmaker. What is going on? One bit of context is that actually not that many people believed it about either – 19% for Farage, and 17% with Starmer. Why so few for the prime minister? In part, it's likely to be his long pre-politics career as a lawyer and then director of public prosecutions – and particularly the knighthood that resulted. More generally, it's fair to say that voters' impressions of politicians are often a bit hazy. A long-running YouGov tracker of the most popular British politicians has Brexit-backing Conservative peer David Frost top, and the shadow education secretary, Laura Trott, third, unlikely results widely assumed to be because people have mistaken them for the more fondly recalled late TV host and Olympic cyclist respectively. More pertinent is that when it comes to actual voter support, Reform are now the top choice among working-class voters. One poll last month said that just 17% supported Labour, against 39% for Reform. Farage is very aware of this current advantage, and makes a point of regular speeches at working men's clubs, channelling Trump's paradoxical political status as a wealthy man who largely spends time with other wealthy men who nonetheless attracts support in deprived areas. All that said, Starmer is determined to shift those Reform tanks by pointing out another similarity with Trump – the fact that Farage's policies seem more generally aimed at the managerial class than those on the factory floor. Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, argued recently that Farage was 'cosplaying' as a voice of the working classes, and that his opposition to the government's employment rights bill and lack of a coherent economic plan showed his lack of authenticity. Even as Farage talks up the return of heavy industry and calls for the water industry to be nationalised, expect more of the same from Downing Street, plus Starmer's insistence that a 'Liz Truss 2.0' policy of mass tax cuts would hurt ordinary families the most. And if you run a factory, brace yourself for more political visits.
BBC News
40 minutes ago
- BBC News
Winter fuel payment U-turn in numbers
The government's decision to largely reverse its cuts to winter fuel payments has raised questions about its spending and savings plans - and its fiscal Verify has been looking at the the key numbers. What has changed on winter fuel? At the time Labour won the 2024 general election, the Department for Work and Pensions was projecting that 10.8 million pensioners in England and Wales would be eligible for winter fuel payments in payments are worth either £200 or £300 per household. The new government, in order to save money, decided that only pensioners in receipt of pension credit (a separate benefit aimed at low-income pensioners) would receive winter fuel payments that winter - and said that would reduce the number of individual recipients to 1.5 the government has changed course - after widespread criticism - and said that, from 2025-26, all pensioners will get it, although it will be clawed back in the following tax year from individuals earning £35,000 and claims this means about 9 million pensioners will now be eligible.. The effect of this is largely to undo the impact of its initial policy in terms of the numbers affected. How much will this cost? The government estimated that the cost of the winter fuel payment system it inherited in 2024-25 would have been £ estimated that its initial reform last year would cut this bill by £1.4bn in 2024-25 (rising to £1.5bn in 2025-26) taking the cost of the system down to £0.5bnNow the government says the cost of the system after its latest change will be £1.25bn - a saving of £450m relative to a system in which all pensioners were eligible to receive the government added that this £450m saving has not yet been certified by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) - the government's official if it transpired, this saving would be only a third of the original £1.5bn savings target. And some analysts think the overall net saving for the government could actually be lower Labour's initial 2024 reform, winter fuel payments were only available to those in receipt of a separate benefit aimed at low-income pensioners, called pension year, the government initiated a campaign to encourage the hundreds of thousands of pensioners who are eligible for pension credit, but who do not claim it, to start doing latest data shows almost 60,000 more pension credit claims were awarded than otherwise might have been, likely because of the government's awareness campaign. With each annual pension credit claim costing the government £3,900 a year on average, the former Lib Dem pensions minister Steve Webb has calculated that the total annual cost of these new claims could be about £ additional cost would offset around half of the £450m savings claimed by the government for its latest changes to winter fuel eligibility. How can the government afford this U-turn? When Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the tightening of winter fuel payments in 2024, she said the £1.5bn per year savings were needed to stabilise the public those savings were entered into the OBR's budget calculations. Now the savings will only be £450m per year - or even lower - a gap of at least £1bn will open up in the government's Treasury said it will address this gap in the next Budget in the Autumn of 2025 and said "it will not lead to permanent additional borrowing".Assuming the OBR does not raise its GDP growth and tax revenue forecasts in the Budget, giving the government more money to fill the gap, this will imply ministers would either have to raise additional taxes or cut spending elsewhere to close this roughly £1bn gap .However, it should be noted that £1bn is a relatively low sum in the context of the public 2025-26 the government is projected by the OBR to spend £1,347bn and to borrow £ is also worth noting that the projected savings from the government's working age welfare reforms, announced earlier this year, are considerably higher than the savings from changing eligibility for winter fuel changes in eligibility for personal independence payments and the cuts to universal credit incapacity payments are projected by the OBR to save the government £4.8bn a year by 2029-30. If the government were to reverse or water down those reforms, as some Labour MPs are urging, it would create a considerably larger financial headache for the chancellor in terms of meeting her fiscal rules specify that she has to be projected to be on course to balance the government's day-to-day spending budget (which excludes spending on infrastructure) by March 2025, the OBR projected that she had just £9.9bn of "headroom" against this rule, a very small amount of leeway given the size of overall government spending and the welfare cuts would wipe out around half of many economists expect the chancellor's projected headroom to be further eroded by the OBR in any case in the Autumn Budget as a result of downgraded growth forecasts and an increase in government market borrowing costs in recent months. What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?
