Time to take back Labour’s clothes and rebuild from our core socialist values

You know, however difficult I find the euphoria of my friends who support the SNP, at a time when all I can think of is that as a country – and we are still part of the UK – we have voted in a majority Tory government for the next five years, I can’t and don’t criticise them.

I found it hard to take the day after the election, when all I could see, and what still consumes me, is the impact on the poor, the vulnerable, immigrants and working people of another five years of rule by a party that cares little for those groups other that as a source of cheap labour, and has presided over the mass transfer of wealth from the rest of us to the very rich.

I really don’t know how it happened that the Tories got in with a majority, but I am unwilling to set the blame at the door of the SNP and find it hard to take from many SNP supporters  – without much evidence – that it can be laid entirely at Labour’s door.

Social justice – rhetoric or reality?

I like Nicola Sturgeon. I really do. I like her clear focus on social justice and her willingness to make that part of the political vocabulary again. During the UNISON referendum hustings I asked her a question about child poverty and she told me that she was passionate about ending poverty – that it was her passion for social justice that had brought her into politics. Good to hear!

What puzzles me though, is why the SNP Government over the past few years – years in which Nicola has been deputy first minister - has persisted in policies which run counter to a social justice agenda. Why they have continued with a Council Tax freeze which, although electorally popular, has been shown to benefit the richest rather than the most vulnerable, who are most dependent on public services; why they have cut college places, a route out of poverty for many children from working class and poorer backgrounds; why they have voted again and again against including the living wage in procurement?

Maybe there’s a limit to what you can do as a deputy. From the trade union responses to Nicola’s statement it is clear that they are prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt – to take her at her word. It would be churlish not to do the same.