No Visible Change

 

by Rab Bruce’s Spider

 

Mastodon: @RabBrucesSpider1@Mastodon.Scot

BlueSky: @RabBrucesSpider.Bsky.Social

 

 

By now, most Scots who voted for Labour in the 2024 General Election must have realised that, as many of us warned would happen, they were lied to. The meaningless slogan of “Change” was simply an attempt to portray them as Not the Tories, with Scottish Branch Office Manager Anas Sarwar being one of the few who actually tried to put a little meat on the bones. He never actually said what change was coming, but he did promise no Austerity, and he insisted his MPs would stand up for Scotland. How hollow those promises must sound now. Fortunately for Anas sarwar, nobody in the media will challenge him about these broken promises.

 

The UK Labour Government have shown that, while they aren’t on the scale of the Tories, they are quite happy to accept bribes – sorry, gifts and donations . Worse, though, they have shown themselves to be politically rather inept. By insisting that there would be no tax rises on working people, they hemmed themselves into a corner, and by sticking to Tory-imposed financial rules which were designed to justify Austerity, they have made some very unpopular decisions. When there are targets which could significantly increase their tax revenue, they have instead opted to focus on hurting the most vulnerable. After freezing pensioners and abandoning the WASPI Women, they’ve now turned their sights on the disabled, with plans to cut the amount of money paid in Personal Independence Payment. This Disability benefit was itself a replacement for Disability Living Allowance, and was introduced by the Tories in order to cut the amount of money paid to disabled people, many of whom need this money to survive. Now Labour are threatening to cut it again. As usual, there are no reports of them planning to cut down on tax avoidance by the wealthy, nor to cut MPs pay, nor to restrict the amount paid to members of the House of Lords. Funny that.

 

Whatever Elon Musk may say, Labour will almost certainly remain in power until the next General Election in five years’ time, but the big worry is how much damage they can do in that time. They may not be the Tories, but too many voters who fell for the Labour lies now seem to be falling for the Reform Limited Company lies. What will it take for people to realise that Farage and his pals are in it for themselves? They have no interest in helping people; simply in extorting as much money as possible out of the economy. In fact, the only good thing that might come out of Nigel Farage having been elected as an MP is that the people of Clacton can see just how little he cares about them. He’s probably spent more time in the USA than he has in Clacton. I say that safe in the knowledge that if this post is shared on Facebook, nobody will bother checking it for factual accuracy.

 

So where does this leave Scotland, apart from many voters suffering from buyer’s remorse? Sadly, it leaves us no further forward. Yes may be doing well in the polls, and so too the SNP, but nothing much else is happening. Of course, some will argue that when your opponents are making mistakes, it is best to let them continue, and Labour are certainly making mistakes. The problem, though, is that the media is ensuring that most of the disaffection is turning voters towards Reform Ltd rather than surging support for the SNP. I fear it will not be good enough to simply sit back and wait for more voters to turn to Yes. We need some political leadership, and we need some strong statements and policy decisions. We’ve seen the positive public reaction when the Scottish Government announces more popular policies such as partially reinstating the Winter Fuel Allowance. We need more of that sort of thing to show the Scottish public what could be possible if we became a normal, self-governing country. Above all, we need a proper plan for how to break the constitutional deadlock. Simply waiting for Westminster to give in is not going to work.

 

There are certainly signs of the Yes movement stirring, but political leadership is what we need above all. But with Alex Salmond’s passing, the SNP is really the only viable political party which can provide this. By all means let Labour make their blunders, but be sure to take advantage of those own goals and to make a big fuss about doing so.