Every day I’m out knocking on doors in Edinburgh South-West, and I’ve been very heartened by the response. Win or lose, I know voters value having someone from within their community standing up for them.
But when even Defence Secretary Grant Shapps is talking about stopping a Labour “supermajority” it’s only realistic to recognise the polls are closing with less than a fortnight to go and we will have a Labour-led government in Westminster. But it’s all very much to play for in Scotland, with at least 22 seats on a knife-edge and Labour suspending its candidate in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East for his views on Russia and anti-semitism.
The question then is what kind of Labour Party are voters being asked to back? I’m not sure even the Labour Party knows the answer. Take this week’s Scottish manifesto launch, and its unequivocal rejection of private education. “Scottish Labour will end all public sector support for fee-paying private schools, implementing the recommendations made by the Barclay Review to end their charitable status for rates relief,” it says.
In fact, charitable rates relief ended two years ago, but compare that aggressive statement with Shadow Scottish Secretary Ian Murray’s view in a recent letter – “The independent sector plays a critical role in the education ecosystem in this country and we don’t want to interfere in that,” he wrote.
And while Labour attacks Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for his wealth, it’s quietly ignored that their Scottish leader Anas Sarwar’s children are privately educated thanks to a trust built on a family fortune about which most of us can only dream. No VAT worries for the Sarwars.
Page after page of the manifesto contains vague and uncosted spending commitments, but like Rachel Reeves, Mr Sarwar insists taxes will not go up to fund them. But as the Scottish Government has limited borrowing powers, who really believes this? Maybe it’s as well none of the promises affecting devolved areas can be implemented.
Then Sir Keir Starmer moved the goalposts by saying taxes would not increase for working people, and then defined them as those who “earn their living, rely on our services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble”. If he believed a small savings account disqualifies you as a working person, then if anyone was out of touch with real people it was him. No wonder he was forced to backtrack.
And then there’s gender recognition. Not long ago, Sir Keir was saying it wasn’t “right” that only women have a cervix and now he apparently thinks a woman is someone with a vagina, sounding very like someone who blows with the wind depending on the last line he heard, in this case Sir Tony Blair. And in Scotland the party still backs the removal of medical diagnosis, in other words self-ID, and the conversation therapy ban.
No wonder the Labour leader’s approval ratings are in stark contrast to his party’s position, with 51 per cent thinking he’s a dud compared to 34 per cent who view him positively. And it will only get worse when he finds it takes more to run a country than flimsy soundbites disguising the truth that he doesn’t really know what he believes.
