Tag: Westminster

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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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This illustrates how crazy our election voting system is

THE clocks have changed. It’ll be brighter tonight. The year moves inexorably forward towards the coming General Election.

Elections ought to be moments of change. A point in history where power transfers from one group to another, where ideas are won and the direction of a country changes. Exciting even.

But looking south across the Border to the contest between the main Westminster parties, it seems anything but exciting. It is almost impossible for Labour not to win in England. Yet you would be hard-placed to find too many citizens animated or enthusiastic about it.

In part, this is down to a deliberate ploy by the Labour leadership to promise nothing and say less. The main opposition party are seeking election precisely on the basis of not changing the incumbent Tory Party’s overall economic framework. That can only mean that the people who are being excluded and denied by the current system will continue to lose out.

For them, the election will change nothing. Indeed, that will be the case for most of us. It is hard to detect any serious difference between the two main parties.

Now, many people – and I probably include myself – believe through instinct or hope that Labour have to be better than the Tories. But in truth ,when you compare the stated policies of the parties, it is hard to make that claim. In areas such as pensions, the Tories even appear to be rather more committed to the welfare state than their opposition.

This grubby, uninspiring contest we have to look forward to is the product of wilful actions by political leaders, but their approach is enabled – even perhaps necessitated – by a ridiculous electoral system designed to ignore rather than resolve political differences.

First-past-the-post might be okay where a binary choice is to be made, but in any other context is simply not fit for purpose. It is deliberately designed to ensure that those elected are required neither to have majority support nor to represent a plurality of opinion. In the great majority of parliamentary seats, the winner represents only a minority of the voters who cast their vote.

When these results are aggregated to a state level, the distortion exaggerates. The first dislocation of results from the electorate allows political parties to form majority governments with the support of much less than half of the electorate – or at least those in the electorate who can be bothered voting.

In 2015, David Cameron won a majority of seats in the House of Commons with just under 37% of the vote. On that basis, he gave us Brexit. Shocking? Undemocratic? For sure, but nothing new.

Ten years previously, one Tony Blair got an even bigger majority with close to 35% of the votes cast.

Perhaps the most grotesque distortion of first-past-the-post is in what happens when third or fourth parties do well. Far from seeing smaller parties get some minimal increase in their representation, the system just inflicts lethal damage on the party they have taken support from. This is because the winner doesn’t need a majority; just more than the person who comes second.

The are various websites where you can play til your heart’s content by predicting the outcome of the election assuming varying levels of support for each party. You plop in the vote share and press a button.

I try not to spend too much time on this but for the current purposes and to illustrate how crazy the system is, I ran this little exercise (It’s just for England and Wales).

Let’s assume Labour can get about 43% of the votes cast at the next election, the Tories 10 points behind on 33%, LibDems on just under 10% and Reform and Greens on five each.

That’s assuming a much smaller gap between Labour and Tory than has been the case for over two years now. But it sounds sort of plausible, I think. That split would produce a Labour government with an 120-seat majority.

Now, what happens if Labour support stays exactly as it is, but some Tories switch to Reform UK – which they are currently telling pollsters they will do in their legions? If 5% switch and the Reform UK vote goes up to 10%, the Labour majority rises to 188. If a further 5% switch, then the Labour majority goes up to 274 and the Tories are left with 100 seats.

There’s a point at which the changes become almost exponential, and seats start changing hands in droves without the winning party having to do anything at all. This is the sort of thing that gives democracy a bad name.

But if the distorted results weren’t already sufficient corruption of the electorate’s will, the first past-the-post-system conspires in other ways to undermine the expression and resolution of political differences. By its nature, the system requires the winner not to have majority support but to be the biggest minority.

That means it requires parties to form broad alliances of opinion to get levels of support above a third. In itself, this means that differences are resolved within parties rather than being matters for the general citizenry. Sometimes this leaves a party completely at odds with its own supporters, never mind the electorate as a whole.

Such is the case with Labour and Brexit where the party will not even contemplate returning to Europe even though this is the expressed wish of the overwhelming majority of their own supporters.

It cannot be healthy for democracy that not a single major UK party will commit to reviewing and reversing Brexit when this is what half of the population wants.

The toxicity of first-past-the-post for democracy intensifies as parties rooted in the centre-right or centre-left fight for the support of the same bunch of voters in the middle.

By definition, these voters will be paid more attention than those whose support is already in the bag, and by definition, this group of voters will desire a lesser degree of change than the rest.

he result is a set of less than inspiring polices and a whole lot of people well upset about that but unable to do anything about it. It’s little wonder many people will tell you: “They’re all the same.”

This frustration, the feeling of being unrepresented, festers and is destroying what passes for democracy. In England, Labour will win the next election, I’m sure. But it will be won by promising Tories they are in safe hands, by seriously alienating many traditional Labour voters, and with a huge level of frustrated abstainers.

It’s a weak base for governing and could end in disaster in a very small number of years.

Now, of course, we should note that the Labour Party at their last two conferences made commitments – by very big margins – to change the current electorate system.

But as if to illustrate exactly the problem, no sooner had these votes been called than Sir Keir and his entourage were insisting there would be no change.

The SNP support a proportional voting system where the results reflect the votes cast by the people. Given a chance, that’s what we will vote for, but in truth, the condition of parliamentary democracy in England is hardly our bailiwick and nothing is going to change until Labour say so.

Sadly, I can’t see that happening any time soon.

And in this – as in so much else – the aspirations of people who live here will be better served by Scotland becoming a new independent state with a proper functioning democracy enshrined in a written constitution.

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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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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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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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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.