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Why independence supporters must vote SNP at the next election

It’s 2024. Election year. And it really is all to play for.

Under the UK’s unfit-for-purpose constitution, the incumbent gets to decide on polling day. Opposition parties talk up a May election. They will claim the Tories are running scared if they don’t call it then. But unless the gap between the Tories and Labour gets close to single figures, it’s difficult to see why the Government would go early.

It doesn’t really matter, the result is already clear. Labour are so far ahead in England as to be uncatchable. Pollsters predict that if a General Election were held tomorrow, Sir Keir Starmer would romp home with a majority of between 100 and 200 seats. It won’t be held tomorrow, and the majority won’t be that big, but even with their track record of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Labour cannot lose in England.

The reasons for Tory oblivion are pretty clear. There’s been no Brexit dividend, and the unified right which made it happen is splitting down the middle. Although Reform aren’t quite inflicting the damage Farage did in 2017, they are getting there. Real incomes are falling; most people feel worse off. Westminster’s catastrophic management of Covid continues to unfold with questions mounting as to why they spent so much more than comparable countries only to preside over many more deaths.

Labour just need to stand aside and let the Tories fall apart. That is precisely what those around Starmer will do. Every one of the 44 red wall seats is already toast. You can see it in the eyes of the incumbents; the likes of Lee Anderson and Jonathan Gullis know they are well past their sell-by date. But Labour will oust more than 100 Tories from their own heartlands too.

Now you might argue that with the Tories in such disarray, now might be the time for Labour to champion a revitalised British social democracy. Comparisons are made with 1997.

Say what you want about New Labour – and I could say plenty – they did at least have a bunch of stuff – devolution, tax credits, international aid – that added up to a different vision from the tired John Major government.

But today’s new, new Labour have given up on pretty much everything the party ever stood for. There’ll be no attempt to make the wealthy pay more. Even those at the very bottom subsisting on state pensions and benefits can’t be sure Labour would be more generous. Inequality will remain the scourge that it is without any conviction or plan to change it.

There’ll be no new money for the NHS. No acceleration to green energy. No return to Europe. Every hare-brained right-wing populist idea the Tories come up with is top trumped by Labour.

The Labour strategy isn’t pretty but as a short-term device to win seats, it is effective. I feel for the many lifelong Labour activists in England now abandoned by their party. Some will stay at home, some will vote Green, but most will go along with it. Turnouts will be low, disillusion will be high, feeding a dangerous legacy of alienation and apathy. That’s the price Labour seem content to pay to win Tory support.

This is Labour’s strategy for England. But it won’t play well in Scotland where desire and demography are different.

Against that backdrop, we should consider how this election campaign is fought here. A generation of Labour activists – of which I am one – made a conscious decision to embrace independence as a political strategy not because we were nationalists, but because we believed it offered a better prospect for achieving the social and economic change we desired.

A medium-sized European country north of Britain seemed just more able to deliver a just and equitable future than a vestigial imperial power avoiding coming to terms with its past. And the very idea of running our economy in the public interest sat well with the character and psyche of the Scottish electorate whereas it grated against England’s small C conservative majority.

Every statement Starmer makes, every abandoned promise, every reassurance to the rich and powerful demonstrates that we were right. This is not to say that the right has taken over Labour – although that is clearly the case. It’s more that for Labour to win electorally in England, they must compromise so much that they cannot achieve real change. Independence offers Scotland the chance not to have its ambition thwarted by another country’s political reality.

Given that the prospect of the Conservatives winning this year is practically inconceivable, two things follow. Firstly, what is the best way to influence an alternative UK Government into being something better than a low-calorie version of what it replaces? Secondly, how can we make sure this country’s journey to having autonomy over its own affairs and resources does not stop after two decades of remarkable progress?

There are many decent people in Scotland contemplating voting Labour simply because of a desperation to get rid of the Tories. I understand that. But the Tories have already lost, and the SNP are a more anti-Tory party than Labour. I have lost count of the number of times we have voted against proposed Tory legislation whilst Labour sat on their hands for fear of upsetting some swing voters somewhere.

More to the point, on pretty much every social and economic policy you can think of, the SNP will press for the things that Labour used to believe in and have now abandoned. So, anyone wanting real change at a UK level would do better to send representatives to Westminster who will force Labour to be different, rather than give Starmer a blank cheque.

There is a bigger question for Scottish voters. Will they simply be ignored by a Starmer government? If the SNP lose this election, the answer is yes.

Around half of the population believes that Scotland should be an independent country. The desire has not – and will not – go away. At some stage, we will vote to establish a new independent country – and the campaign to win that vote must be broad and diverse involving every party and organisation in the movement for national autonomy.

But that is not where we are now and that is not what we are voting for in this year’s General Election.

We need to be very clear with the electorate – this year’s vote is about whether the journey continues, whether we can create circumstances to move towards our independence. And with a corrupt first-past-the-post system, the only way to do that is to vote SNP.

The Daily Record, in a hardening of its editorial stance against the party, last week questioned whether the SNP can still represent the political ambition of independence. The point is we don’t have a choice. If the SNP lose the election in Scotland, the debate on independence stops. That is why we must put aside our differences and unite.

If we win, we will use every means to press that mandate against a British state under new management. Crucially, we will demand that this decision must be made in Scotland and that the UK constitution is changed to respect that principle. That is why anyone who believes Scotland should become independent, or even that we should have the choice to do so, ought to vote SNP.

The stakes are high. We must win. It will not be easy. But it can be done.

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National Insurance cut is fooling nobody – Tories want the ultimate ‘dead cat’

Was last Wednesday’s economic statement from Chancellor Hunt devised with the coming general election in mind? Of course it was. But whether it works in bolstering Tory fortunes is anyone’s guess. It was certainly a very Tory budget: tax cuts, attacks on public spending, and the demonisation of a new target group in the shape of those suffering long term illness.

Let’s start with National Insurance. We persist in the myth in this country that this is not a tax but a contribution to a pension fund. It isn’t. There is no fund where NI contributions go to be invested so that returns can benefit the contributors in later years – there’s just the treasury. Increases in the basic state pension don’t happen because fund managers made a good return in the previous year – but because of policy. And the state pension isn’t paid for just from NI contributions but from general exchequer spending.

So, the cut in the rate of NI people pay is to all intents and purposes a cut in the tax on their income. The cut of 2% will benefit 27 million people, that’s half the electorate. And to make sure everyone notices, the cut is being fast-tracked to January so that the effect is not lost in other changes.

Will the bribe work? Probably not. For four reasons. The first is that just as imposing flat rates on everyone is regressive, so too is cutting them. Clearly 2% of £50k is a lot more than 2% of £25k. So, the more people are struggling on low incomes, the less benefit the 2% cut will have.

Secondly, the reduction in NI is a lot less than the extra income tax pretty much everyone is paying due to thresholds having been frozen – estimates suggest about a quarter. And while the Tories try to pull the wool over people’s eyes, when it comes to studying their wage slip most aren’t daft and can see what’s happening. The centre-right Resolution Foundation predicts that average household will be £1900 poorer at the end of this parliament than they were at the beginning. That’s an historical first.

Thirdly, and speaking of not being stupid, most people will feel that the small increase in their bottom line that this change will bring still falls far short of the rising costs they are being squeezed by. The overall rate of inflation may be falling but many costs for low- and middle-income families are still going through the roof. The Bank of England estimates the four million UK households who will move onto a new mortgage deal in the next three years face average increases of £220 a month. Energy prices are two or three times higher than two years ago and set to rise again, just as the government refuses to offer any support with bills.

Fourthly, the government is giving with one hand and taking away with the other. This minor cut is tax is to be funding by another squeeze on public spending, achieved mainly by cutting real term wages.

Perhaps choosing NI as a mechanism may throw some scrutiny on just how strange this levy on earnings is. Because of the fiction that it funds the state pension, NI contributions stop when you get to pension age – even though you can keep on working, or in some cases, receive considerable earnings from investments without working at all. This ceased to be fair a long time ago and it is time we had an honest discussion towards building for a decent income in retirement, which everyone gets because they are a citizen, not because they have contributed to the NI scheme.

NI is completely reserved to Westminster, but we ought to be thinking now about how we can design and find a better, fairer system of social insurance in an independent Scotland. It wouldn’t be hard to do better than what we currently have.

Back to the budget, sorry, statement. Much has been made about boosting productivity by changing business taxation, particularly by exempting capital expenditure from corporation tax. Just before we examine that claim, a word about corporation tax itself.

The UK has one of the lowest rates of tax on business profits of any advanced capitalist economy. This is not a tax on business, only a tax on the profits they make after everything else is paid for. A fairer, more progressive system would mean not only that new small and medium size businesses could be better supported, but that the big corporations would be expected to put more back into the communities which helped them generate their surpluses in the first place. That is what we could do if we had power over taxing business profits – the power that comes with being a normalindependent country.

The UK’s regressive approach to taxing business profits runs through the latest wheeze on capital spending exemptions. Of course, business should be incentivised to invest in becoming more productive and just as importantly, in becoming more sustainable. But that would require a plan, a set of targets about what the country wanted its businesses to do. There is no plan.

Instead, businesses can simply offset pretty much any spending on buildings, plant and vehicles for tax purposes. And it doesn’t have to have any impact on productivity. You could replace a machine that makes ten widgets an hour with a new one that only makes eight. You would still get the tax relief. In truth this is just a bung to businesses to get them to vote Tory, a bung which will cost taxpayers billions. 

This is desperate stuff from the Tories, trying to pose as the party of business but without the first clue as to how to actually support and develop manufacturing. We can do better than this.

But the most desperate ploy of all in the chancellor’s statement is the creation of yet another Tory target. People to blame when the Tories won’t accept the blame themselves. Enter the long-term sick, particularly those suffering from mental illness.

They say the sign of a civilised society is how it treats its most vulnerable. By that measure we are heading for barbarism. The proposal to “close the file” on claimants who cannot jump through the myriad of hoops in their path to subsistence payments is beyond anything Thatcher and Tebbit ever conceived. It won’t work, how could it? And it won’t save any money. It’s not designed to. It’s the ultimate dead cat. We know we have messed up, made you poorer, less safe, more miserable, say the Tories. But hey, look at these disabled “scroungers” taking your money. Vile and reprehensible. The sooner they’re gone the better.

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UK is complicit amid horrors in Israel’s war on Gaza

With the UK media obsessed by Boris Johnson’s appearance at the Covid enquiry and Tory infighting over immigration, the war on Gaza has slid down the headlines. And yet, the past week since the pause in the fighting collapsed has been one of the heaviest yet in terms of the death and destruction.

More than seven hundred Palestinians were killed in one day last week, the highest daily toll so far. The aerial bombardment has continued unabated. The targets are now in the south, especially around the city of Khan Younis, a place where tens of thousands of civilians have fled from the north. 

For people on the ground the situation is increasingly desperate. Many have moved repeatedly over the last two months, fleeing danger only to become a new target. The health service is on its knees, able only to provide the most basic help. One doctor reported that 80% of patients were now receiving amputations. Facilities are now effectively field hospitals in a war zone.

More than eight out of ten Gazans have been displaced. More than 60% of homes destroyed. People are living in tents on streets surrounded by rubble. Food is in short supply. Water is dirty. It is a recipe for disease to spread on an epidemic scale. Aid agencies report that humanitarian assistance is impossible.

The worry now is that Israeli forces will flatten southern Gaza as they have the north. The World Health Organisation has appealed for protection for the two remaining major hospitals in Khan Younis which are now the hub of what is left of the health service.

You might wonder why this scale of aerial bombardment is continuing as Israeli ground forces now occupy all parts of Gaza? Israel claims it is only fighting Hamas. It also claims that the Hamas military operation operates from a network of underground tunnels which they are trying to destroy.

I confess I am not an engineer, nor do I have any experience of explosives. But I am pretty sure than the best way to destroy a tunnel is to detonate an explosion inside it in order toachieve its collapse. Aerial bombardment seems particularly ineffective in achieving this. If anything, you would think that layers of rubble five or ten metres thick would provide additional protection to anything underneath.

No wonder Palestinians and most observers conclude that the objective of Israel’s military operations is in large part to do with rendering Gaza uninhabitable, displacing its Palestinian residents into Egypt. 

There are plenty of Israeli politicians who are quite open about this aim. “We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” says Avi Dichter, Israel’s Minister for Agriculture and former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Agency. 

Many others support and amplify this view. There is no pretence about precision attacks, just total destruction.

Underpinning these views are a series of anti-Arab attitudes growing in force in Israeli civil society and media. Chris Doyle, the Director of the respected Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) provides a compelling and forensic examination of this. He says there is a trend to portray Palestinians as animals, a stark process of dehumanization that is necessary if you are going to get involved in ethnic cleansing and war crimes. He cites Sara Netanyahu, the powerful wife of the PM, saying “I really hope that our revenge, that of the state of Israel, on the cruel enemy — will be a very big revenge. I don’t call them human animals because that would be insulting to animals.” 

As Doyle points out there has of course, been a long history of vile, bloodthirsty anti-Semitic comments from Hamas. The difference is that whilst these are called out by Western political leaders, there is silence about genocidal remarks against Palestinians.

This hardening ideology provides cover and context not just for the indiscriminate destruction of Gaza, but for the increasing attacks on Palestinian villages by armed settlers in the West Bank too. There have now been over three hundred such attacks documented since October 7th, with over 250 Palestinians killed and more than a thousand displaced.

Anti-Arab narrative has always been part of Israeli political discourse. The difference is that today it has become mainstream. This is also leading to a crackdown on dissent both within the occupied territories where more than one thousand Palestinians have been detained and within Israel itself where alternative voices are silenced.

The problem for the Israeli government is that it is difficult to see how this strategy will work, either in eradicating Hamas or other armed Palestinian groups, or in providing security for Israel itself. 

There are 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, more than three million in the occupied Palestinians territories in the West bank and Jerusalem. As many again are refugees in neighbouring countries. They are not going away. At some stage Israel will have to come to terms with the necessity of sharing the place we once called the Holy Land with ten million Palestinians. 

Imagine the effect the current war is having on the Palestinian population. More than seventeen thousand dead, seven thousand of them children. Tens of thousands injured. Severe collective trauma the consequence of this collective punishment. Does anyone imagine this will be anything other than disastrous in the long term. Their families will not forget about the events of the last two months. The IDF says it has killed five thousand Hamas fighters. The real question is how many more thousand is it creating by its actions. 

But what if Israel could annex the areas it occupies by force and displace all Palestinians into neighbouring countries? What sort of future is that? A fortress state constantly vigilant against a minority of its own population living in continuous tension with its neighbours. That is the vision the right-wing extremists aspire to, but it offers little for most ordinary Israelis who crave peace and security.

There is only one way out of this which offers hope for Israelis and Palestinians alike. The war must stop and talking must start. That will require considerable international pressure and intervention. A ceasefire could lead to a managed truce and de-escalation with international arrangements for the temporary administration of Gaza and brokering new talks aimed at long term solutions. 

Sadly, we are a long way from that. Our own government and that of the US mouth platitudes but do nothing. They talk of upholding international law but stay silent when presented with prima facie evidence of its breach.

“I must admit I sense that the prime minister feels zero pressure, and that we will do whatever it takes to achieve our military goals,” Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser Ophir Falk told Reuters last week when asked about the international pressure on Israel.

Those of us trying to offer solidarity with a Palestinian people under existential threat need to make that pressure rise. That is why we are debating arms sales to Israel this Tuesday in the UK parliament.

Meanwhile Christian churches in Bethlehem have cancelled Christmas celebrations in solidarity with Gaza. The Lutheran church has a new nativity with a baby Jesus set amongst a pile of rubble. It is a poignant representation of the suffering of Gaza’s children who find themselves buried under what is left of their own homes. Its pastor, Reverend Munther Isaac says “If Christ were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble and Israeli shelling.”

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Big oil continues to spout its nonsense

COP28 is on right now. The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, to give it its full name, is currently grinding through its agenda in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. I suppose it is better that this event happens than it doesn’t, but many are giving up hope of real change happening fast enough to avoid a worsening climate catastrophe.

You would be forgiven some cynicism in thinking the UAE is an odd place to hold a climate change conference. They are after all the world’s seventh largest oil producer and currently committed to a massive expansion of that industry. 

And yet the central discussion this weekend is whether to agree to phase out the production of fossil fuels in decades ahead. Not immediately. Just a target in years to come. 

Astonishingly, this isn’t already the case. Pretty much everyone accepts that burning fossil fuels is why we are in the mess we are, and yet there are plenty who say we don’t need an outright ban. Just cut down a bit, they say.

Big oil is sort of going through the phase big tobacco was in 20 years ago. They accept their product is bad for you but rather than simply stop, they are promoting ways to mitigate its effect. Pretty much the same thing happened when the cigarettemanufacturers said they weren’t advertising cigarettes but promoting smokers to switch to lower tar brands.

It was nonsense then. It’s nonsense now. There is of course a role for technologies like carbon capture, being pioneered in our own fair city. But the worst role for it would be create an excuse for the continued development of more oil and gas.

We need to get over it. The fossil fuel era needs to end.

You would hope that our government might take the lead in this switch. I was one of several MPs in the climate group who wrote to Rishi Sunak in the summer asking him to do just that. A week later, he announced that the Rosebank oil field – bigger than any we have had before – would get the green light. So, it’s not going well.

Too many people at this weekend’s conference will be bumping their gums. Going through he motions. Saying one thing. Doing another. Something gotta change.

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​Israel must call a ceasefire in Gaza now

More people have written to me about what is happening in Gaza than anything else in the eight and half years I have represented this city. All bar a handful express solidarity with the Palestinians and demand a ceasefire now. I agree with them. And like everyone else, I watch with horror and feel impotent to stop the catastrophe unfolding day by day.

It is the scale that is most terrifying. Twice as many people killed in three weeks than in three decades of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. 11,000 bombing raids dropping ordnance greater than the Hiroshima bomb – more than five kilograms of explosive for every man, woman and child. Most of the two million plus population displaced and homeless, civil administration collapsing, power, food and water running out, disease now taking hold.

And yet, the western world stands idly by and allows this to happen. Sunak and Starmer talk of Israel’s right to defend itself. But the bombing of overcrowded civilian areas and the killing of thousands of innocents is not self-defence. It is a war crime. Demanding that a million civilians head south and then bombing them when they do is not self-defence. It is a war crime. Blocking supplies of food and medicine to people who are sick and starving is not self-defence. It is a war crime.

Whilst the world’s attention is on Gaza, attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have dramatically intensified. Gangs of armed settlers have so far killed 120 villagers. Not Hamas fighters. Not militants. Olive farmers mainly. The Israeli authorities turn a blind eye, and sometimes collude.

The intention is clear; to force Palestinians from their own land. Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem report that entire villages are now abandoning their homes under extreme pressure. Some call this a new Nakba, the mass displacement of 1948 – and Netanyahu’s talk of a second war of independence makes clear that this is his understanding too.

The Israeli government claims all of this is in response to the horrific Hamas attacks on October 7th. But we are way beyond that. Apart from international law requiring military responses to be proportionate, they should also not be directed at non-combatants.

In any military situation, there will be innocent casualties. But this is different. We are not seeing civilians caught in the periphery of attacks on military targets. The civilians are the targets.

There are some driving this Israeli campaign who quite clearly believe they are at war with the Palestinian people, that Hamas and the people of Gaza are one and the same.

This is the most extreme right-wing government in the history of Israel. Before this war it was deeply unpopular. Many inside Israel believe Netanyahu is waging death and destruction on this scale in part to keep himself out of jail.

The political objective here is the denial and eradication of Palestinian claims to territory, a redrawing of the map, the end of any notion of a Palestinian state. That is why Palestinians now face an existential threat. That is why we should support them.

I watch in shame at the complicity of the British government in all of this. We cannot do much. But we can speak out. We can say – not in our name.

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Still the bombs rain down. Still the world watches.

“We can hear them crying out from under the rubble. There are more than a thousand buried now. Rescue teams are being bombed as they try to get to them.” The words of Palestine’s Ambassador Husam Zomlot as he briefed a packed meeting of MPs at Westminster on Wednesday.

As he described the hell on earth being created in Gaza, the mood was sombre. He told us 2,700 children had been killed so far in the Israeli bombardment. That figure must be more than 3,000 now. We learned earlier in the week from Christian Aid workers that mothers were writing their children’s names on their bodies with marker pens so that they could be identified.

The health service has all but collapsed. As we met, desperate efforts were underway to get fuel to keep hospital generators going. The lives of 130 premature babies in incubators hung in the balance.

More than 50% of Gazan homes have been razed to the ground. There is no power. No medicines. In desperation, people are drinking dirty water as fresh supplies have run out. Health agencies now fear the outbreak of cholera and other serious disease.

Still the bombs rain down. Still the world watches.

Many of us have spent the last two weeks demanding the UK government joins growing international calls for a ceasefire. We have been met with the grotesque dissembling from Sunak and silence from Keir Starmer. They keep repeating the mantra that Israel has the right to defend itself, adding the codicil “within international law” as a seemingly disposable afterthought. The British Foreign Secretary as good as told MPs that Israel’s war on Gazan civilians was justified by the Hamas attack on 7th October.

Undoubtedly the Hamas attack was an horrific outrage, rightly condemned on all sides. The people responsible for this barbaric terror against innocent civilians must be held accountable. And all hostages must be released immediately.

But the carpet bombing of residential areas and the mass slaughter of innocent women and children can never be a legitimate act of self-defence. Israeli leaders demean themselves by claiming otherwise. This is self-evidently in breach of international law.

So too is the continued siege of the Gaza strip, an area smaller than Arran. This is collective punishment being visited upon more than two million Palestinians. It is illegal.

The blanket refusal to acknowledge this means that the UK government’s position is to support Israel without criticism or condition. No matter what. The platitudes about international law are insincere in the mouths of Tory ministers. None of this is a surprise to Palestinians. They have been misled, lied to and betrayed for 106 years by this country and many others.

Three quarters of a million people have been displaced so far in this carnage. They have fled south on foot, hoping in vain to escape the bombardment. Some in Israel intend that they should go further, into Egypt, to be banished from Palestine forever.

Meanwhile in the occupied West Bank attacks on Palestinian villagers by armed settler groups have tripled in recent weeks. More than a hundred have been killed. This violence is encouraged by the Interior Minister who was proudly filmed handing a machine gun to a settler paramilitary.

As Israel now prepares a ground invasion of Gaza, there are serious concerns that the situation could spiral out of control and spread across the entire Middle East.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all of this is that it won’t work. Many thousands more Palestinians may die. Many more Israelis too. And for what? Israel will be less secure as a result, not more. There are many people in Israel and in the wider Jewish diaspora who know this only too well and have spoken out against the mass bombing of Gaza. You will rarely hear their voices on British media.

There is no military solution to this problem. Israel deludes itself that it can eradicate Hamas. Perhaps it can. But in doing so, it will only create the conditions for another similar group to emerge.

The situation demands immediate action. A ceasefire on all sides. The creation of humanitarian corridors to allow people out and food, water and medicine in. This is now supported by mostpeople in Britain and throughout the world. I’ve had more contact, over 1,300 emails, on this catastrophe from constituents than on any issue. They want it to stop.

The devastation in such a small area is so vast that simply finding the bodies will take weeks. Only the UN has the authority and capacity to coordinate and oversee this urgent work and we should be supporting it to the hilt.

But what then? How can we escape the cycle of violence? How can we avoid a temporary cessation simply being used by each side to regroup, re-arm and repeat?

We start by understanding why these things have come about in the first place. This story didn’t begin on 7th October this year. And yet when the UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres made the fairly obvious statement that we needed to look at the Hamas attacks against the history of the Israeli occupation, he was accused by Israel of justifying the attack and met with a complete overreaction of UN officials being banned from Israel.

Gutteres is correct. Hamas exists and grows because of the continued failure to provide any political solution to the denial of Palestinian rights. If we want to defeat Hamas, and I do, we need to address the decades of dispossession and displacement suffered by Palestinians. Over the last year the actions of Israel’s extreme right-wing government in expanding settlements, strengthening the occupation and hinting at annexation have done the opposite – acting as Hamas’ recruiting sergeant. 

In the middle of the last century there was no such thing as the Gaza strip. Gaza city was a thriving Mediterranean seaport with a mixed population. In 1948, Israel was born out of the Arab-Israeli war and the armistice agreement that followed demarcated Palestinian territories including the West Bank and a strip of land along the Mediterranean 25-miles long and four to six miles wide.

Into this area poured over half a million Palestinian refugees from the north who had been displaced in the war, making it even then the most densely population area in the region. The 1967 war saw Israel occupy the Palestinian territories. After the Oslo Accords, Israel withdrew to allow the strip to elect its own administration. But after Hamas won the election in 2006, Israel blockaded Gaza, beginning a 17-year siege. Nothing moves in or out without their say so, and almost everything is in short supply.

There is a public sector. There is some commerce and industry. But most people eke out a hand- to-mouth existence made possible only by funds provided to support refugees through the UN. Ordinary Palestinians feel forgotten by the world, and largely they have been. Despair, poverty, alienation. Exactly the conditions required for groups like Hamas to take root and grow. And the continued refusal by Israel, backed by the west, to negotiate a better deal for Palestinians drives ordinary people into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists.

There are only two ways to avoid another four decades of war, terror and bloodshed. Either we allow the evolution of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel and have a negotiated UN-backed agreement between the two states; or the State of Israel is transformed by giving Palestinian the same rights as today’s Israelis enjoy.

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Don’t write off SNP’s election chances

Last week I was chosen by local members of Edinburgh East and Musselburgh SNP to be their candidate in next year’s general election. It’s a great honour. For me, that election cannot come soon enough.

But I am under no illusions that it will be easy to keep the job I’ve been doing for the last eight and a half years. The coming election will be the biggest challenge the SNP has faced in a long time. It will be a hard fight. But one I am determined to win.

As I write this the votes are yet to be counted in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election. You’ll know the result now. And I would be astonished if Labour did not win. It used to be one of their safest seats. The incumbent MP, elected under the SNP banner, disgraced herself and was effectively sacked by her own constituents. If Labour couldn’t win in these circumstances, they really ought to give up.

But don’t be too quick to write off the SNP in places like this. I know from having spoken to over 150 people in Rutherglen that there is still strong support for the party. Of course, some are fed up and disillusioned. They read of the resignations and enquiries. They see a party arguing with itself and they question whether it can achieve the change it seeks.

In part this is the consequence of the refusal of the Tories to respect the wishes of the Scottish electorate. Not one, but three mandates have been ignored as the Tories just say no. It wears people down. It saps their confidence. It destroys their self-belief. That’s what it is intended to do.

In some ways we have brought these problems upon ourselves – or at least made them worse. But we are rebuilding now. We have a new leader, a new CEO, and this month’s conference will allow us to refresh our message as we agree our strategy for the election.

Despite all the political turmoil the arguments for Scotland becoming an independent country have never been more compelling. Over the last few years many more people have realised that the powers that come with independence are exactly what we need to tackle the cost-of-living crisis and the climate emergency.

Now more than ever we will need to press that case and demonstrate that this is not some abstract debate about the constitution but a matter of real changes here and now.

This country is blessed with abundant natural resources yet too many of our citizens live and die in poverty. Lives unfulfilled. Potential wasted. Only by taking control of our own affairs can we ensure our wealth is marshalled for the common good and not global corporations.

Across the UK voters are being offered a choice between two sad and uninspiring options. The sickening right-wing populism of the Tories on the one hand and the pathetic lack of ambition of Sir Keir Starmer’s hollowed out Labour Party on the other.

Thankfully, Scotland and Edinburgh have an alternative. We can be better. We can demand more from a new UK government than Labour wants to give us. And we can maintain our journey to self-government. That is why this election is so important.
Bring it on.

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Labour is now a party of conservatives with a big C and a small C

Surely the Labour Party must have run out of promises to break. In all my time in politics, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a party say what it won’t do as much as Sir Keir Starmer’s one.

It is depressing and I take no pleasure from it. A once great social democratic party, which can take credit for huge achievements like founding the NHS, has been reduced to a centrist organisation determined to leave inequality and injustice pretty much as they are.

Labour is now a party of conservatives, with a big C and a small C. Unable, unwilling to contemplate the changes required by the twin crises of poverty and climate.

At the last three elections, I’ve found that my own views and that of my Labour opponent had a lot in common when it came to social and economic policy. So, my pitch to voters was that they could vote for me as a left of centre candidate and, in addition to a range of progressive policies at a UK level, I would also pursue the ambition of self-government for Scotland.

That’s changed. It now seems my Labour opponent and I will disagree on a range of quite fundamental social and economic policies. Assuming that is, that they argue for their UK party policy.

Some of this is really basic stuff. We all know massive investment is required to achieve a just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It’s what Joe Biden is doing in the US. Labour has ruled it out.

Speaking of fossil fuels, we also know we need to wean ourselves off them. Yet Labour says it will not slow down the phenomenal Tory expansion. Any new drilling licenses issued by Sunak before the next election will be honoured by Starmer. Even Rosebank, which is bigger than anything we have ever seen.

We all see the grotesque increase in inequality in our society. Millions on the breadline, forced to decide between eating and heating. Lives ruined, human potential squandered on the altar of unregulated capitalism. Yet, at the same time, more billionaires than ever. Will Labour do anything about this? Not according to shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves who has ruled out any wealth taxes on the super-rich.

The two-child limit which refuses families on social security support for a third child unless the mother can prove it was born as a result of rape is the most inhumane of all the Tory attacks. It affects relatively few people. It is mainly a symbol of Tory contempt for the poor. It wouldn’t cost much to scrap it. But Labour won’t.

And now even something as routine as devolving drugs law to Scotland to allow a better more targeted approach to the crisis has been ruled out by Scottish Labour. No change. Anywhere.

All of these things are reserved to Westminster. All of them should be run from Scotland. That’s why as well as continuing our journey toward a self-governing independent country, we will also be arguing for emergency powers from a new UK administration. If Starmer hasn’t the inclination to change things in the UK, at least give Scotland the power to get on with the job here.

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Overcoming festival problems takes two to tango

The first week of the Fringe is over already. And its accolade as the world’s largest arts festival seems pretty safe. Organisers say ticket sales in the first weekend broke all records.

Over 50,000 performances of more than 3,500 different shows. It’s a remarkable achievement to recover from the pandemic which closed our city three years ago. I salute those who have worked so tirelessly to make it happen facing down challenges of labour shortages, rising costs, the cost-of-living squeeze on audience budgets and the turmoil in short-term rented accommodation.

But there are problems ahead and now that we’re over the existential threat we should start thinking about them. The first is getting this city to love its festival in a way other cities love theirs. Many local people revel in the weird and wonderful array of performances on their doorstep. But many see the festival as something that is done to them, not for them.

The Fringe started in the city centre, it’s where most of the venues were. But over the decades it has tried to expand to other parts of the city. This year it looks as if there’s been an artistic implosion into the Old Town. The western end of my constituency is a big rectangle bordered by Princes Street to the north and Melville Drive to the south. Lothian Road sets the western border and the Pleasance/St Leonards the eastern. It’s less than one square mile. And it hosts 90 per cent of the Fringe.

As I turned onto London Road from Leith Walk on Wednesday it was as if the Fringe – and the other festivals – stopped. Going out past Meadowbank and Jock’s Lodge and down to Porty you would have no clue there was anything on. In part this is because the journey back has been cautious. The Fringe is a commercial world. Venues have to sell tickets or drink or both with no public subsidy. So, people look to what they know. And what they know is the Old Town.

Back in 1998 the Fringe programme boasted 168 venues compared to today’s 248. Still the world’s largest arts festival then. 25 years ago, 12 of those Fringe venues were in Leith. Today, even with the new tram link, there are fewer. Not good.

An accommodation crisis has been postponed. We should use that to plan a series of exemptions for the artists that make the festivals. I strongly support regulation of short-term lets. But we mustn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

Someone offering festival lodging in a spare room in their own home shouldn’t be entrapped in bureaucracy. And we could improve regulation by creating a not-for-profit lettings agency – backed by the city, festivals and government. Owners using that agency could do so without the need for licenses or permissions for the period of the festival.

There’s more. Much more, from creating training and employment for local people to using the festival to enhance our city’s schools. It does of course take two to tango. So, much as I exhort those running the festivals to embrace the city that hosts it, we in turn need to make it our own. Perhaps for starters the council could put up a sign saying welcome to festival city – they did 30 years ago.

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Time for a new way to deal with our drugs policy

“Free bags of weed and crack cocaine if you vote SNP”. Thus declared one Unionist troll on twitter in response to the Scottish Government’s drug policy report which argued, amongst other things, for decriminalisation of possession of controlled drugs for personal use.

The online troll went a bit further than the main right-wing tabloids, but the gist of their front pages was the same. The SNP Government stands accused of encouraging drug use, taking the side of ne’er-do-wells over the righteous.

The Tories piled on. So too did Labour’s Sir Keir. The SNP was either playing politics or helping drug dealers – either way it was all their fault.

We need to get beyond this knee jerk nonsense if we are to have a grown-up debate about how to tackle the drugs crisis.

The Scottish Government has indeed recommended that the possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use should be decriminalised. Why do we think it reached that conclusion? Could it be that the thoughtful and mild-mannered Drugs Minister, Elena Whitham, is really in the pay of organised crime?

Perhaps it’s because the independent drugs task force called for it. Or maybe because more than 30 countries have now taken this step and are seeing their drug problems reduce rapidly.

I know many people think that because drugs are illegal it stops them. It just doesn’t. Seriously, it works the other way round. It allows the market to be regulated by organised criminal gangs. It makes people who use drugs scared of seeking help, either through fear of retribution or of being charged themselves.

That’s why more than a hundred people in Scotland are dying every month. They die alone. Scared. Helpless. All because we have made them criminals.

It’s time to wake up. The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 does not stop anyone who wants drugs getting hold of them. It just makes it very hard to do anything about it.

Decriminalisation instantly does three things. One, it means anyone with a problem can ask for help without being stigmatised or charged. Two, it means health professionals can intervene without fear of arrest, checking what’s in stuff, giving advice and stopping overdoses. And three, it means our police officers can stop arresting people for possession and concentrate on the organised criminal supply chain.

Drugs policy is reserved to Westminster. At the moment, the Scottish Government can do little but argue. That’s not playing politics, it’s just a fact. We need the Scottish Government to have the powers to act and we cannot wait for independence.

Westminster should devolve the power now. In truth, this could be done easily and without fuss. This is exactly what section 30 of the Scotland act is for.

I’m really not sure why they won’t. The Tories say they disagree with the policy of course; they see it as being “soft on drugs”. But if they devolved the power to Edinburgh and it didn’t work, they’d have another stick to beat the SNP with. And the Scottish Government would have nowhere to hide.

Maybe what they fear is that the policy might actually work. And if it did, they’d be under pressure to change throughout the UK. If that’s the case, then I wonder who is actually playing politics here.