Category: Westminster News

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Labour Government will only enhance the case for indy

So, we’re off. 4th July it is. In democracies elections are meant to be instruments of choice and change. A turning point in history when one set of ideas about how things should be run gives way to an alternative view, based on the popular will of those living there.

But what happens when the choice between the main alternatives is so slight as to be almost imperceptible? That is pretty much the case in this British general election.

In the blue corner, the Tory government, looking dead on its feet and waiting for the electorate to put it out of its misery. A government that will leave office with average living standards worse now than when it came in. A government that has turbo-charged inequality giving the UK the dubious distinction of the most unequal country in Europe. A government weaponising immigration to set communities against each other, whose defence secretary talks openly of planning for war. No wonder there is a longing to be rid of them.

But in the other corner stands Keir Starmer’s Labour party, a hollowed-out shell of a once great social democratic party, bereft of principle and ambition. A would-be Labour chancellor who pledges to accept Tory spending plans lock, stock and barrel, including an estimated £20bn public service cuts already baked in. A would-be Labour health secretary who openly talks of a new role for the private sector in our NHS. A would-be Labour foreign secretary who cannot bring himself to condemn serial war crimes committed by the Israeli government in Palestine.

It’s a grim choice. Little wonder that in many Labour heartlands disillusion is rife. As this month’s English council results showed, Labour is failing to win in areas it ran a generation ago. No matter, say Labour strategists, they are winning in Tory areas, and that’s where it matters.

But Labour are winning Tory voters not by asking them to consider a different world view but by pandering to their prejudices and reassuring them that they can support the changed Labour party and still be Tory-minded.

It might be a recipe for short-term success but it will have a bitter and dangerous legacy. You cannot get bets on Labour winning at the bookies now, so convinced are people that they have in in the bag. And in England they probably have. But however wide the margin of Labour victory at the coming election, its depth will be shallow. The omens are not good for how this will work out. Disillusion and resentment will soon visit itself upon a Labour government unwilling and unable to change the social and economic ills it has interested.

And in England, waiting in the wings to take advantage of this situation are the far-right, better organised and resourced than at any time since the 1980s. It’s a depressing scenario south of the border. The good news is that in Scotland it doesn’t have to be this way.

The SNP should refuse to get dragged into this grubby uninspiring contest that the duopoly of despair in London are playing. Now is a time to look the people of Scotland in the eye, invite them to lift their gaze to the horizon, and imagine the type of country this could be.

A country where the envied and bountiful natural resources are truly used as a common treasury for all rather than being a means for the further enrichment of the global elite. A country where the scourge of poverty is banished for ever by tackling its root causes. Where we establish a tax and reward system which encourages hard work and innovation but locates individual endeavour in a public interest framework which allows everyone to meet their social obligation.

A country which rises to the climate emergency, accelerating the dawn of a zero-carbon future in a way that takes the current workforce with it. A country celebrating its diversity, encouraging people to come and live with us. A country with the agency to be a force for good in the world as it punches above its weight in helping to confront the global challenges facing our species.

These are not the idealistic ramblings of an ageing lefty, but actual public policy in already existing similar European countries.

It is not difficult to build a broad consensus around taking Scotland in this direction. The argument comes in how to get there. Scottish reformers have debated strategy for more than a century, oscillating between two central approaches. Either we play our part in a much larger British polity and seek to use the power of that state to make the changes everywhere. Or we take the power for ourselves by creating a new independent Scottish state with the agency to make these changes.

I once believed in the British approach, but decades of bitter experience led me to change my mind. I became convinced that it was more likely that we could change society in a left social democratic direction if we did so first in Scotland where a majority of the population could be persuaded to the merits of that change, than to remain part of a much larger state where there are substantial forces implacably opposed to that change. Pretty much everything Keir Starmer says convinces me I made the right decision.

Where Labour governments have made changes in the past, they have been reversed within a few short years when the next Tory government comes in – and in Britain most governments are Tory. Today it’s even worse – Labour is now so wary that it doesn’t promise any significant change in the first place.

The union, even if governed by Labour, does not offer Scotland a route to a progressive future. This is not because there are bad people in the Labour party, or because they don’t want to. It’s simply that the compromises required to achieve the tolerance of the rich and powerful in Britain are so great as to render change almost impossible.

So, that is why we must make this election about the vision of what an independent Scotland could be like. And we must illustrate by example. Yes, the Scottish government has done what it can to mitigate and protect our public services with one hand tied behind its back. But independence would free it up to deliver what is needed.

Some of these things might happen without independence and we will certainly demand them from a new Labour government. Improved rights at work, scrapping benefit caps for the poorest, a real living wage for everyone, more money for out health service not less, accelerating a just transition which protects jobs. The SNP will aim to force Labour to be different, and for many people that will be the most important choice. Do they give Keir Starmer a blank cheque, or do they elect a representative who will hold him to account?

But when Labour resist this pressure, as their leadership already say they will, the case for Scotland having these powers will be enhanced.

We will demand that decisions on whether, when and how to consult people on their constitutional future must be made in Scotland by its elected representatives. This election will be of crucial importance to the movement for Scottish autonomy. If the SNP wins, the journey to an independent future is boosted. It the SNP lose, it isn’t. Every independence supporter should think long and hard about this choice.

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Starvation used as a weapon of war in Gaza

Don’t take my word for it. Joseph Borrell, the EU’s foreign minister, and a man who is very careful with his words, said on Monday “This is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine.”

Israeli ministers, and their apologists on the right of the Tory party, claim that they cannot allow aid to be delivered because Hamas will siphon it off for their fighters. Even if this were true to some extent, this is still an admission that starvation is being deployed for military purposes. But worse, Israel has extended the use of this tactic to attack the entire civilian population, most of whom are entirely innocent, their only crime to have been born Palestinian.

International law dictates that Israel as the occupying military power, are responsible for the wellbeing of the civilian population. Not only are they refusing to do that, they are stopping other peoples’ aid reaching Palestinians too. This is a war crime squared.

What little aid that does get in has no distribution process in place with UNRWA, the agency that could and should do it, neutered by the Israeli military. In consequence people already weak after eating grass and animal feed for weeks, scrabble over each other to fight for scraps. By definition those in most need will lose. It’s inhumane. Grotesque.

But the thing that should shame us most is that the UK government does nothing, acquiescence becoming complicity. 

I used to have some regard for Alaistair Mitchell, the minister who fronts the government’s foreign policy in the Commons since MPs are not allowed to question Lord Cameron. Not anymore. On Tuesday, questioned for nearly two hours, he repeatedly refused to call for a ceasefire, defended weapons sales to Israel, and never once uttered a word of criticism or admonishment of the Netanyahu regime. Shame on him.

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Nuclear route does Scotland no favours

As we limp towards a general election later this year, energy policy will feature high on the political agenda. Sadly, though, it looks as if one aspect of that debate will escape serious scrutiny due to a cosy consensus between the main parties at Westminster. Nuclear power.

Earlier this week Parliament debated the government’s recently published civil nuclear roadmap. This hare-brained scheme sets out an ambition to quadruple the current 5.9 gigawatts of nuclear energy production by 2050. Sadly, not only does the Labour party support this Conservative plan, it accuses the government of dragging its feet on implementation, suggesting that if anything a Starmer administration will accelerate the nuclear programme.

It’s crazy that this 20th century technology still commands such widespread political support in the UK. A quick recap. Nuclear power is – by far – the most expensive way of generating electricity ever devised by mankind. Contrary to claims it is not a renewable energy source. It is fuelled by uranium ore of which there is approximately 90 years supply left, less if programmes expand. Most of this is in Kazakhstan so it hardly qualifies as a secure energy source.

Moreover, it produces toxic waste which has to be kept isolated from human beings for generations. The new roadmap by the way suggests a new form of reactor which will produce twice as much waste and has no credible plan to safeguard it.

You can only spend a pound once – and if the government spends billions on nuclear that investment will be siphoned off renewable energy development. The craziest part of Labour’s plan is to argue for a further windfall tax on oil and gas in order to subsidise new nuclear plants in England. Don’t get me wrong, corporations should pay fair taxes, especially on excess profits. But of all the things you might spend that revenue on, subsidising nuclear power must surely be the worst.

If this continues, our children will look back mid-century and wonder why we didn’t make use of the phenomenal natural energy resources from sun, sea and air. We can stop this nonsense by the simple measure of putting Scotland’s energy policy in the hands of the people who live here. Another reason why Scotland should be an independent country.

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I witnessed the realities of cuts to FCDO funding

Photo Credit: UNFPA Tanzania

“Don’t go that way, there might be snakes”, says Mette. We keep to the trampled path that leads to the inflatable white tent. Inside a front room sits a nurse at a desk full of contraceptives and leaflets, through the back a consulting room where women can get an IUD or implant fitted on the spot.

The set-up is part of a festival like event which includes contemporary African dance, a DJ giving sexual health messages through a pulsating sound system, and groups of young people discussing family planning methods under the shade of nearby trees.

We are in Bagamoyo, fifty miles north of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city. I’m here during the parliamentary recess on a five-day trip with Conservative Baronesses Jenkin and Hodgson, and Labour MPs Kim Johnson and Apsana Begum supported by our organiser Mette Kjaerby.  All of us from the all-party parliamentary group on population, development and sexual health. The title is a mouthful, it’s basically a cross party campaign to improve women’s reproductive rights across the world.

For us, that means finding out what the UK government is doing through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and building pressure to make it do more, better. Today’s event has been made possible by funding from the FCDO. Future ones are now under threat as funding reduces.

At a global level the link between sexual health and rights and unintended population growth was established decades ago. The UN set up a dedicated agency, UNFPA, to co-ordinate efforts and it is under their auspices we are here.

Tanzania was run by Britain when I was born. In 1961 it became an independent republic and Julius Nyere, the man who had led the independence movement its first president. The country Nyrere established had ten million people. Today it has 62 million. The population has doubled in the last twenty years and is predicted to double again by 2050. It is the eighth fastest growing country in the world, and a good place to start if we are going to manage global population at sustainable levels.

Worth noting the land mass is five times that of Britain, and there are large areas of fertile land yet to be cultivated. Those hostile to birth control say that unlike many countries, Tanzania can feed itself even with a growing population. Even if that were true to some extent there are still numerous benefits to reducing the birth rate, for the women and girls involved, and for the country as a whole.  Besides, the continuing influx into urban areas means services are already under pressure. With increased arrivals from the countryside numbers will swell to crisis point.

Dar es Salaam is a massive urban sprawl. It has grown rapidly with inadequate planning or investment in the infrastructure required to cope with a huge population. The roads are good but already full of traffic and there is minimal public transport. Despite a network of bus only expressways under construction it is hard to see how it could double in size without serious collapse. That point is accepted by the government officials and ministers we met, all of whom are now behind the drive to give women choice and access to contraception.

The current fertility rate is 5.8, far higher in the rural, poorer, areas outside the cities. Admittedly that is down from a high of over eight some years ago. Everyone knows that figure isn’t sustainable. No-one will put a figure on what it should be, and targets are eschewed for fear that they might seem draconian and lose public confidence in the process. But everyone we spoke to was clear: it has to fall.

So, all efforts are now going into scaling up family planning. Key is expanding access to modern methods of contraception. Currently about two in five women of reproductive age (15-49) are using some form of contraception. Probably around ten percent will have fertility problems. That leaves almost half – eight million women – who are not currently planning their pregnancies. Agencies say that almost half of that number have already had some interface with the health system, typically when giving birth, and have been offered contraception but are not using it. UNFPA calls this category unmet need.

Unmet need will have to be met, and that requires a range of approaches. Making sure the distribution and supply of materials is up to scratch and women can get the right product at the right time is one. That’s the easy bit.

Much harder is trying to overcome the attitudes embedded in communities steeped in a strong culture which keeps myths alive. This is most intense in the more rural areas and amongst nomadic communities where the birth rate is considerably higher.

Many young women still believe that using contraception will make them infertile. We heard stories of women ostracised from their villages because they have chosen to use contraception – the social pressure not to is intense. Nonsense about contraception reducing sexual desire – for men and women – is also commonplace.

There is still a strong belief amongst these harder to reach communities that bigger families are better. They see more mouths to feed as more than offset by more youngsters to work the land.

Sometimes this is enforced by more than ideas. Agencies working with women who have suffered domestic violence report how they will be more of a target if they are known to be using contraception. There are stories of men cutting implants out of their wives’ arms leaving them to be patched up by mobile clinics.

Until not so long ago these attitudes were tolerated by the government. The former president John Magufuli was well known as a sceptic when it came to family planning, seeming at times to promote procreation as a form of personal and national virility.

That’s changed. Serious work is now underway to reach those not already being offered birth control. We saw a range of creative and imaginative approaches to both increasing services and encouraging their take-up.

Mary is a retired nurse. She now works as a community outreach volunteer in a village health facility run by Marie Stopes Tanzania (MST). She talked to me about her job knocking on doors and speak directly with women to encourage them to come to facilities like hers. Between the health ministry and the main NGOs there are around twenty thousand Marys and they are reaching hundreds of thousands of women every month.

There is a particular problem with teenage pregnancies – 22% of young women pregnant before eighteen. Impressive work is going on at a granular level to reach them. UMATI is an NGO which runs a number of youth centres offering recreational activities combined with sexual health education and direct provision of contraception. The clinic we visited sees 35 young people every day. On Saturdays they take over the local health service clinic and run it specially for young people who are in school through the week. Sadly, that’s now under threat as a result of our foreign office stopping funding last December.

Suzana Mkanzabi runs UMATI. “key to success is the empowerment of young women” she tells me, “we know once they reach 18 they have more agency and confidence to make their own decisions, to have choice.”

Government policy is now being directed towards that end. In 2015 the law changed to mandate seven years primary and four years secondary education for all. So, although there is no legal school leaving age, since primary usually starts at seven this should keep most in the system to around 18.  But it is taking time, parents keep kids home saying they cannot afford the associated costs of uniform and materials, and enforcement varies amongst the 25 regions.

Campaigners also hope this year to see the age of marriage consent raised from fourteen to eighteen, a move which many say will push the average age of pregnancy upwards.

Things are moving in the right direction but there is a race to reach, educate and service the country’s sixteen million women of reproductive age before it is too late – to build a virtuous cycle instead of a vicious one. And in doing that the many passionate Tanzanians we met need our help.

This is the sharp end of the debate on aid funding. This is where the cut form 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% kicks in.  It’s time to reverse this Conservative mantra and for this rich country to once again be seen as a leader rather than a shirker when it comes to doing the right thing.

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Why we must recognise Palestine and ensure UK is not complicit in genocide

This week we witnessed another act in the ongoing pantomime of elected members of parliament trying to hold the UK government to account for its policy on the Middle East. The man in charge, David, now Lord, Cameron isn’t there of course, not having been elected by anyone himself. The rest of us are supposed to dutifully accept this grotesque contempt of democratic norms and make do with his platitudinous deputy Andrew Mitchell.

Mitchell, for those not too scunnered to listen, delivered a restatement of the UK’s belief in a two-state solution with Israel staying within its 1967 borders and the Palestinian territories it currently occupies transformed into a viable new state. This mantra is now so divorced from reality on the ground, and so at odds with the government’s actions, that you don’t have to be a cynic to question whether the FCDO officials who write this stuff even believe it anymore.

This matters. The horror of the last four months in Gaza has forced everyone to confront what happens when it stops. Talks about a ceasefire are underway as I write and might possibly have produced a halt in the war by now. As well as getting humanitarian aid into Gaza this could create the space for the world to intervene and assist in constructing a political solution which will remove the cause of the violence.

And if that happens Britain’s intentions are of consequence. Yet never has there been a government policy which has been pursued with such a lack of effort or sincerity. Worse, the actions of the UK government seem designed to actively undermine its own stated objectives.

To be clear, the political leadership of Israel does not want a two-state solution. Has not wanted it for some time. Has done everything it possibly could to prevent it. Has one state control of all the land in question and is deepening its foundations with every brick laid on every new illegal settlement. And for decades Israel has exercised coercive control of the occupied Palestinian communities designed to break their ability to exercise political agency. For decades.

Throughout it all successive UK governments have stood by and allowed this to happen. Worse, they have aided and abetted. Weasel words are uttered about the settlements being illegal but never a sanction has been considered. Trade agreements get signed, weapons and technology get sent, diplomats are instructed to frustrate international agencies in their criticism.

For many years, the Israeli government has been allowed to pursue a policy of expansion and suppression of the Palestinians without challenge or consequence. This has to change for the simple reason that no lasting peace is possible until it does.

We can start by recognising the State of Palestine. 139 counties have done so. Why not this one? A lot of confusion surrounds this. Recognition is not to say that Palestine exists and functions as a normal state should. It clearly doesn’t, indeed, is actively prevented by Israel from so doing. Recognition is about agreeing in law that the Palestinian people have the right to statehood, about enabling for them the same agency that the Israelis already have. Recognition is about giving Palestinians the right to a voice, a seat at the negotiating table. It is a logical nonsense to claim that you support a two-state solution, but then refuse to recognise one of the states.

Andrew Mitchell parroted the usual nonsense again last Tuesday, that Britain would recognise Palestine when “it best serves the interests of peace”. It is a meaningless statement, designed to be so. Worse, it suggests to many that a Palestinian state is not a right, but a reward to be granted in return for some undefined action, the promise used as leverage. That is what gets the UK a bad name.

If Scotland had the ability to speak for itself on the world stage, I have no doubt that we would join an increasing number of European countries in recognising Palestine. In the meantime, it is a case we will prosecute with vigour in the union parliament.

Of course, the UK can apparently move with speed and purpose when it wants to on the other side of this debate. Last week Israel alleged that 12 employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were involved in the October 7th Hamas attacks. UNRWA has 13,000 workers in Gaza and provides a vast range of essential services. Within hours of the allegations the UK had announced that it would suspend funding for the whole organisation. It’s akin to closing down funding for the whole NHS because Harold Shipman was found guilty of murder.

Now of course, UNRWA employees should be held to account if they were involved the horrific attacks in early October, and these allegations must be investigated. But by any measure the response of the UK and other western funders was an overreaction. Once again, the entire civilian population of Gaza are set to be punished for the actions of a few. It is, as the SNP spokesperson Brendan O’Hara rightly observed, another round of collective punishment on a people already teetering on the brink of survival.

Britain’s speed of response is highly selective. They were not so quick off the mark when it came to dealing with the recent judgements of the International Court of Justice in respect of South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel. Whilst it will take a year or more for the ICJ to determine the case, they announced a series of interim measures insisting that action is taken now to prevent genocide occurring in Gaza. Were the UK government really concerned about the rule of international law they ought to have immediately reviewed policy to ensure compliance with the court. Instead, and to the alarm of much of the rest of the world, they claimed the case should not have been brought and acted to undermine the authority and judgment of the court.

UK ministers are less than convincing when they claim that they encourage Israel to uphold international law. To prove genocide is a high bar but there can surely be no question that Israel is in obvious breach of international humanitarian law.

Too many people are letting this pass. It’s not okay to shoot and kill unarmed civilians approaching under cover of a white flag. It is not okay to send special forces into hospitals and execute people in hospital beds whilst they are getting treatment. When did we dispense with arrest and trial?

Most of all the massive and continuing attacks on civilian infrastructure and the mass deaths of unarmed non-combatants is not okay. I had an argument with a senior Tory last week who thought it was. He argued international law justified civilian casualties if the overall military objective was being met. He is wrong. Legally and morally.

To demonstrate compliance the UK government ought to have made sure that it could not be accused of complicity in genocide. Given that this country is one of the biggest arms exporters to Israel and that those armaments and systems rare now being used against the civilian population an obvious and logical response would be to immediately suspend arms exports until there can be certainty about their deployment.

Components for this weaponry are being made here. The Italian firm Leonardo employs 1800 people in Edinburgh making guidance systems for F35 fighters being used against Gazans by the IDF. It has multiple other licenses to supply armaments to Israel. I believe that the government should halt these licenses right now. And while the UK reviews licenses, I have written to the company suggesting that it would help their own reputation and protect them legally if they were to voluntarily stop supplying the IDF whilst genocide is being investigated.

In the midst of the terrors and chaos unfolding in the Middle East the only response of democrats can be to insist on the universal application of international law. It’s difficult. It’s not trendy. But it is the only way to get through.

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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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​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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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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Tories’ ‘Illegal’ Migration Bill isn’t UK’s top priority, it’s designed to distract from cost of living crisis

Stopping small boats is the number one priority of the British people. So said the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in the House of Commons this week. Really? That’s demonstrably untrue. Why does he say it the? What is the motivation behind this lie?

Well, because if we are talking about small boats, we’re not talking about the deepening Tory-made cost of living crisis, soaring energy bills or eye-watering level of inflation. The Tories believe that they are on to winner by dividing public opinion on migration. It’s politics. And it’s ugly.

Next week, Parliament will spend two days discussing a series of measures against some of the most vulnerable people in the world. The language used is important. When the Home Secretary talks of an invasion, when she creates a divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’, she does so for a particular reason.

The intent is to suggest a hostile hoard massing on our shores. A threat to our wellbeing and way of life. In truth these migrants are amongst the most wretched of the earth. They have lived through trauma and pain the likes of which most of us will never see.

Tory backbenchers try to pretend there are a million or more people trying to get to the UK illegally. In truth, around 3,000 people have come in small boats this year. On average maybe 35 people a day.

It is terrifying to watch this debate at close quarters. Civilised people who ought to know better than espousing narratives that we usually identify with far right and totalitarian governments.

The centrepiece of the Government’s ‘Illegal’ Migration Bill is to remove the right to claim asylum from anyone who arrives in this country without permission. It hopes that this will deter people getting into the boats in Calais in the first place. But the boats have only developed because the Government has effectivity closed any legal way of getting here.

Last year, for instance, the Government’s official scheme for Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban allowed entry to just 22 people. It’s little wonder that more than 8,500 Afghans were amongst those who made the treacherous journey across the channel.

The problem for the Government is that those fleeing persecution have rights enshrined in international law. This doesn’t seem to worry most Tory MPs though. They seem content to break international agreements and preside over our expulsion from the Council of Europe, following in the footsteps of Russia and Belarus.

The other problem with the bill is this: it just won’t work. People will still come because the horrors in front of them will be as nothing to the horrors they leave behind. Instead of being granted asylum, they will be locked up in camps, in a state of limbo, awaiting deportation to Rwanda or elsewhere. This will of course cost the taxpayer a fortune and leave Britain’s international reputation in tatters.

It doesn’t have to be this way. This country could accept its fair share of asylum seekers and refugees. We could provide legal routes for them to come here. We could employ enough staff to make sure their applications are determined quickly and fairly. We could let them work and pay tax whilst this happened. That is the sort of policy Scotland could pursue if it had the powers to do so.