Should we abolish the Treasury?
'Having moved on from Blue Labour, which other policies will Turquoise Labour adopt from the far right?'; 'Given that they are a break on everything, should the Treasury department be abolished?'; 'What would happen if Labour and the Conservatives got completely wiped out at the general election and the Lib Dems and Greens also had bad polling results and the Reform party suddenly lost its mojo? Could a government function or would King Charles have to step in?'
Anoosh Chakelian is joined by Andrew Marr and Rachel Cunliffe to answer listener questions.
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Scotsman
an hour ago
- Scotsman
Readers' Letters: Reform's policies are not far right, they're common sense
Reform has plenty to offer moderate voters, says reader Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... David Hamill (Letters, 9 June) writes that Reform is preaching 'far right poison' while the new Hamilton MP, Davy Russell, stated that 'the poison of Reform is not us', although 7,000 of his constituents voted for Reform. Anas Sarwar has described Nigel Farage as a 'pathetic little man'. Inflammatory language has no place in political debate I doubt if any of the Farage haters have ever looked at Reform's policies, which are available for all to read online in a 28-page document. They challenge much of the current policy consensus across Labour, the SNP and the Conservatives and I suppose that is what so enrages those who do not believe that this consensus has failed Britain and Scotland. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The party's aspirations include cutting migration, with the UK already having a population density of 300 people per square kilometre; stopping the Bank of England paying £35 billion a year in quantitative easing interest; lifting the income tax starting rate to £20,000; cutting the 6,700 EU laws still in use hindering growth; abolishing corporation tax for 1.2 million SMEs; scrapping net zero, saving billions; reforming the NHS to cut waiting times, but keeping it free at the point of use; putting bobbies back on the beat; removing transgender ideology from schools; and reviewing diversity, equality and inclusion policies. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Deputy Leader Richard Tice at a press conference in Aberdeen last week (Picture:) These are not far right polices, there are simply sensible policy proposals which much of the electorate regard as common sense. Too many of our politicians fear to speak out against their party policies which they know are wrong. William Loneskie, Oxton, Lauder, Berwickshire Denial duo What do David Hamill and First Minister John Swinney have in common? Following the Hamilton election they are both in denial. Mr Hamill says 'three-quarters of the voters in Hamilton want nothing to do with the pernicious, far-right poison preached by Reform' but neglects to say that 87 per cent of the electorate didn't vote for the SNP. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Mr Swinney says 'the SNP is in the process of recovery', but with a swing away from the SNP of 16.8 per cent, what does he think will constitute a full recovery? Bruce Proctor, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire Turn the tide Ian Murray MP wants to 'turbocharge' the economy with nuclear power (your report, 9 June). A far cleaner, cheaper, low-tech way to cut electricity prices would be to harness the tides. A 2021 paper to the Royal Society claimed that a Severn Barrage alone could supply 6-7 per cent of UK demand; sling road/rail across the dams and it's a double bonus. Scotland, with its indented coast, would be ideal for such projects, in particular the Black Isle firths, where the boost to the northern economy would be significant, and the Invergordon to Nairn drive cut by a whopping 15 miles. George Morton, Rosyth, Fife Nuclear nod A long time ago I used radioactive isotopes to study smallpox and an antiviral agent that had the potential to stop it in its tracks. Ever since I have made it my business to evaluate the safety of nuclear reactors and nuclear waste, and have concluded that with the exception of the Soviet Union, our obsessional attention to safety in their design and use means that it has not been possible to ascribe any health harm to humans from them, unlike coal waste at Aberfan or oil extraction like Piper Alpha, or, worst of all, climate change-causing CO2 waste generated by burning fossil fuels. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad So I consider the SNP and Greens' antinuclear policies based on arguments about safety (your report, 9 June) to be evidentially wrong. In any case, they will soon be overtaken by events. When the gas has run out and the wind doesn't blow, to prevent blackouts Scotland will be obliged to import electricity generated by nuclear reactors from England. Hugh Pennington, Aberdeen It's over, John In addition to points raised in The Scotsman's report on John Swinney's BBC Sunday Show interview (9 June) he was still touchingly clinging to the independence panacea, citing polls claiming 54 per cent support for the SNP. That doesn't stack up with Hamilton. On a turnout of 44 per cent the SNP got 30 per cent of the votes. That's only 14 per cent of the total electorate. Applying these numbers to the 4.3 million voters in 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're jacking it in. Then Holyrood 2026 can be about which party has the best policies and candidates to halt our health, education, worklessness, Net Zero and public services nosedive. Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire Who cares? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Otto Inglis (Letters, 9 June) writes an excellent assessment of the Hamilton by-election, but for all the analysis and comment, it should be noted that almost 56 per cent of the electorate could not be bothered to vote, so really don't care who represents them in the Scottish Parliament. Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Perth and Kinross Spad news The SNP have announced that their bill for Spad services in the previous year has been a jaw-dropping £1.7 million of our taxes. In any case, considering the party's image plunged to rock bottom in the period, they should be asking for their – our – money back. Alexander McKay, Edinburgh Do nothing I recall, many years ago, being on a course to help senior doctors to become managers in the NHS, as if there weren't enough of them already! We were taught that among the many actions that might be employed to solve any problem there was always the 'do nothing' option. I am currently suffering from a progressive and untreatable lung condition. I am in constant distress due to shortness of breath which is only partially relieved by Oxygen therapy. I can do little more physical activity than shuffle around my house and the condition is putting extra strain on my heart. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Last week, still being of sound mind, I obtained, with no problem, a form I can carry around which says that should I have a cardiac arrest, I do not wish to be resuscitated. Here is a perfect example of a problem where doctors can, without risk of retribution, apply the 'do nothing' option, while at the same time, not reneging on their Hippocratic oath, which says 'first do no harm'. While the assisted dying issue rages on, could not resuscitating be construed as doing just that, by the back door? (Dr) S R Wild, Edinburgh Reform Forces Introducing the Defence Review, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer repeated words he heard on HMS Vanguard, 'nothing works unless we all work together'. Money is short. The Defence Secretary John Healey spoke of 'defence reform' and he should question the need for three services. Most of the RAF's 30,000 personnel are in the UK, as are most of its 500 aircraft (including 46 support aircraft, 37 helicopters, 160 trainers, 90 gliders). The RAF has 75 per cent of all MoD aircraft and 50 per cent of frontline aircraft, the other half being Army or Navy. Only 20 per cent of RAF personnel have flying duties, most of its 'aviators' are ground crew or support staff, yet 20 per cent are officers – including 40 air marshals and 100 air commodores. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Most RAF operations support land forces, some support Maritime Britain. With 60 uniformed personnel for every aircraft, trainer and glider, the £10 billion-plus a year RAF, with its ten display teams, seems overmanned and under-employed. In times of plenty all this may be justifiable – it's not today. Defence costs too much to maintain three services. Unsentimental reorganisation of HM Forces would help make them 'battle-ready', providing huge savings, advancing the government's 'defence dividend'. There is no need for a separate air force. An army and navy with RAF air assets and personnel transferred would see defence emerge leaner and more cost-effective and, importantly, be operationally more efficient with no loss of air capability. 'Nato first' would be better achieved by the UK being tasked as the principal maritime power in the eastern Atlantic, the land powers of the Continent providing the principal armies. The Defence Review should prompt radical change here and in Nato. Lester May (Lieutenant Commander, Royal Navy – retired), Camden Town, London Power babies Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Rarely has the saying 'the love of money is the root of all evil' borne such lethal purchase than during the monumental falling out between Donald Trump and Elon Musk this past week. It seems a long time ago that Musk and his fellow oligarchs made up a billionaire front row for Trump's inauguration as president. Their fallout has been a long time coming, not helped by Musk's infamous Nazi-style salute on that occasion. He never recovered from the deserved barb that he was unelected, all the while wielding a hacksaw indiscriminately through whole swathes of US life in the notorious DOGE. It says everything about US politics that the Democrats would now even consider taking Musk's money. The whole affair stinks of two-uber rich big babies tossing their grown-up toys out of the pram. Ian Petrie, Edinburgh Write to The Scotsman
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Does Labour have the guts to ditch the trans activism and Gaza-ology?
Mr Swinney seems a bright chap, but even he seems to have been dulled by daily proximity to his cabinet. Responding to the SNP's loss of the seat, he'd wisely declared that supporters of Reform UK in Scotland were not racist. It's just that ordinary people had opted for them out of their concerns about Brexit, he claimed. If this is the quality of the advice he's getting from his battalion of spin merchants then he needs to start culling them now. The loathing that his party and some prominent independence activists have for working class communities was also on display in the immediate aftermath of the by-election. What intensified their fury was that their votes were more or less evenly split between a Labour candidate whom they associated with Scotland's white Protestant working class and a Reform candidate who also appealed to this community. In diverse, progressive and enlightened Scotland there can be many cultures but some are less equal than others. Read more One tweet from a high profile independence activist characterised the loathing for working class Scots that has been evident in nationalist circles recently. 'Congratulations to all the loyalist North Britons who voted Labour, Tory, Libdem & Reform yesterday for Scotland to remain a provincial backwater. Well done. The bigots will have even more of a swagger on their orange marches led by an MSP as ignorant as themselves. No Surrender!' And nor was this a sudden burst of intemperate fury. The SNP's revulsion for every-day, working-class Scots has been building for years throughout the Sturgeon/Yousaf/Swinney era. It's been visible in their callous attitudes to Scotland's annual addiction mortality rates and their Hate Speech legislation. In the last week or so, I've spent time in Edinburgh's Wester Hailes neighbourhood; walked the streets of Larkhall and chatted to students at Glasgow University. In Wester Hailes High School, the head teacher and his staff are working closely with community groups to secure real jobs and careers for pupils, many of whose families are menaced daily by health inequality and in-work poverty. In Larkhall, working-class people who come from a sound Labour and trade union background never mentioned Brexit or immigration. They had simply begun to realise how much Scotland's so-called progressive, left-wing elite actually despises them. In Glasgow University I listened to a young student journalist, among the best of his generation, talk about how working-class Glaswegians on campus are often viewed with class contempt. The new fraudulent Left who have hollowed out the independence movement; the Labour Party and trade union activism have abandoned these people. They have contrived a suite of no-risk, arms-length credos by which they judge whether you can be admitted to their platinum lounges. In no particular order they are trans activism, climatism and Gaza-ology. A Stop The War coalition march against the war in Gaza at Queen's Park in Glasgow (Image: Gordon Terris) None of them entail anything more than proclaiming slogans on social media, some flag-waving on marches and assembling the odd firing squad to harass those not deemed to be true believers. Lately, a little dose of good, old-fashioned anti-Semitism has been added to the mix. Ordinary Scots recoil at authentic transphobia and want to be kind to the environment. They are not racists and they're appalled at the death and destruction in Gaza. However, despite being dismissed as ill-educated by the salonistas of the Scottish Left, they deploy nuance to these debates. They also wonder why, after 25 years in which Scotland's devolved government has been solely in the hands of left-wing parties we still have a housing crisis, stubbornly high child poverty rates and the worst drugs deaths figures in Europe. The communities who appeared at the top of the first Multi-Deprivation Index still stubbornly cling to their places nearly two decades later. In the endless struggle against workplace inequality and profiteering they would normally expect the trade union movement to be their champions. You can forget about that, though. The STUC is currently led by an international property tycoon with five homes across Scotland and Spain and a recently-purchased £100k plot of land. As long as Roz Foyer remains in place anything the unions say about homelessness or redistribution of wealth is rendered meaningless. Ms Foyer was also a panellist earlier this month in an anti-racism event to stop Reform. It also featured one campaigner whose inchoate rant featured the word scum a lot and a London-based activist who was shouting so loudly all through her infantile diatribe that the permanent residents of the nearby Ramshorn kirk-yard were in danger of being roused from their eternal slumbers. Read more In almost two hours of this the only rational contribution was from a working-class Labour councillor who reminded the audience that 25 years of class-shaming by Scotland's political establishment were driving multitudes to Reform. In Hamilton last week, one senior Labour activist, though jubilant at Davy Russell's triumph, was refusing to get carried away by it. 'What's been really interesting is that there's been stuff around class and elitism on the doorsteps,' he said. It's been evident the massive disconnect between these people and the groups they've traditionally relied upon to fight for them. 'All the parties of the Left have lost their ability to communicate with everyday people. They're all focusing on identity politics and other issues that are of no concern to working people. Labour especially needs to do some deep thinking about what we stand for and what it means to be on the Left.' Until recently, the election of a man like Davy Russell in the West of Scotland would have passed unremarked. It's just that we've grown so accustomed to a Holyrood dominated by shallow chancers reading from scripts prepared by their £1.7m spin section that the victory of someone who doesn't fit that mould seemed so startling. Kevin McKenna is a Herald writer and columnist. He is Features Writer of the Year and writes regularly about the working-class people and communities of Scotland.
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
The Scottish Tory who has perfected the art of 'vice-signalling'
I believe Fraser, like myself, is straight. Being straight, I tend to leave it to the LGBT community to decide what's homophobic. Fraser, however, seems to believe that including trans people is a homophobic act. It rather bewildered Scotland's LGBT community. Certainly, when I asked friends who are gay - ranging in age from 25 to 82 - they were mystified by Fraser suddenly becoming a warrior against homophobia. In 2014, when the Scottish Parliament voted for gay marriage, Fraser was one of just 18 MSPs opposed. Last year, whilst running for leadership of the Scottish Tory Party, Fraser said he's still opposed to gay marriage. It's due to his religious beliefs, apparently. Still, none of this stopped him shooting his gob off in a thoroughly attention-seeking fashion which seemed designed to both offend and be unnecessarily cruel. Which is vice-signalling in a nutshell. Though maybe Fraser had different conversations than I with his own gay friends that justified his actions? Anas Sarwar, realising that nothing matters so much as thirsting to be the centre of attention, got in on the vice-signalling act. He accused John Swinney of running a 'disgraceful' campaign. That's the same John Swinney who defended Sarwar when Nigel Farage's Reform unleashed 'racist' attack adverts against him. Now clearly, nobody needs to be thanked for calling out bigotry, but it's pretty difficult to see how Swinney ran a disgraceful campaign whilst simultaneously having Sarwar's back. Perhaps, being raised rich and well-connected insulates Sarwar from silly notions like decency and courtesy? Evidently, Scottish MSPs are mere minnows compared to the King and the Kong of vice-signalling: the politicians of London and Washington. Reform's newest MP Sarah Pochin wasted no time getting straight to vice-signalling by resurrecting the 'ban the burqa' culture war. Kemi Badenoch clearly felt left out of the cruelty derby so quickly told the world that she won't speak to women who wear burqas in her constituency surgery. How thoroughly democratic of her. Badenoch has her work cut out though. One of the nastiest characters in British politics wants her job: Robert Jenrick, who as Tory immigration minister ordered the removal of cartoon murals in a centre for refugee kids in case they found it too welcoming. Gleeful bullying, sneering mockery and spiteful grandstanding are everywhere you look these days. Among the New Right, dead-naming trans people seems to be a modern-day Olympic sport, and laughing at poverty positively required. God help us, one American-Israeli "comedian" even seeks laughs from dead Palestinian babies. Donald Trump (Image: Ap) The entire Trump presidency - which seems rapidly shifting towards outright militarised authoritarianism - has turned vice-signalling into an art form. The White House puts out tweets designed explicitly to hurt, mock and humiliate. One featured a group of handcuffed people being deported to the soundtrack "Na, na, hey, hey, kiss him goodbye" by Bananarama. It takes quite the talent to be both ghoulish and childish simultaneously. I reckon there's a few psychological assumptions we can make about what's happening. First, some people are just nasty b******s and they like wearing the nasty b*****d badge. They're like the kid you went to school with who had no friends but could sometimes be found torturing cats down by the riverbank. Most vice-signallers, though, probably aren't raving psychopaths. They're the more interesting, from a clinical point of view anyway. Why do they act in ways that many of us never would? Well, for a start, more and more people are beginning to act like this. The anonymity and immediacy of social media both protects the goon squad and encourages their behaviour. It's like the old adage: "If everyone is doing it, then why can't I?" Monkey see, monkey do. The more blood-soaked the online world becomes the more people want blood. Sometimes literally. I rarely use Twitter today, but when I do I'm stunned by the levels of actual, physical violence on display. Then there's the fact that a large minority of people are rather pathetic and attracted to bullies and thugs. It's likely a sign of their own psychological and physical weakness. They see someone kicking the daylights out of an innocent person and reckon it's much safer to cheer on the attack than step in and do the right thing. To step in requires courage and risks them becoming the target. On a deeper level though, perhaps humanity is simply subconsciously at the end of its tether? We can all behave appallingly when we're tired and scared. Who amongst us hasn't had a terrible day and then acted like a petty idiot to someone who didn't deserve it, taking our misery out on the innocent? Just look at this sulphurous world. We're living on a planet that's nuked up to the eyeballs with wars of profound brutality raging and the people in charge either don't care or seem out of their minds. The Earth is being destroyed, as we level rain forests and gobble up resources. We're wilfully allowing climate change to ruin the future for our children. We know the next virus could decimate us. We've no clue how to fix poverty, but each day there's more billionaires. Is it any wonder that cruelty is in fashion? Being a b*****d is the new black because as a species we're terrified of the future and hate our failures and what we've become.
