Labour Lies
You will be used to being lied to. You’ve been lied to a lot. But the speed of this unfolding seems more brutal and more blatant. The speed between ‘celebrating’ a Labour victory and their sell-out was swift. In a bizarre piece of positioning, the Daily Record/Labour had a front page where it was promised that Anas Sarwar would somehow ‘stand up’ to Keir Starmer. It was difficult to think this was possible, but also difficult to understand why this would be necessary. This morning, after Labour suspended seven MPs for six months because they voted to overturn a Tory policy which imposes poverty on children, and not a single Scottish Labour MP was among them, you know that neither is true.
The Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland reported that abolishing the cap, which it estimated would cost £1.3bn a year, would lift 250,000 children in the UK out of poverty, including up to 15,000 in Scotland.
To be fair, Labour told us in advance exactly who and what they were. No-one should be surprised. Day after day, week after week, Labour told you what they wouldn’t do, what we couldn’t afford, but at times, on this specific topic, they did say …
Only a few years ago Keir Starmer was very clear:
We must scrap the inhuman Work Capability Assessments and private provision of disability assessments (e.g. ATOS), scrap punitive sanctions, two-child limit and benefits cap.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) February 6, 2020
Three months ago, Torsten Bell described the two-child benefit cap as “immoral”. Last night, as a Labour MP, he voted to keep it …
In a Scottish context the lies are more specific. The Daily Record, again, urged voters to ‘end child poverty’ by voting Labour. It even suggested that this was Sarwar’s ‘moral mission’. This morning, Labour were off the airwaves.
Some Scottish candidates made specific claims to get elected.
Michael Shanks is a liar and a hypocrite.
The move is revealing. As Owen Jones writes: “Firstly, it completely undermines Starmer’s slogan of choice: “country before party”. Starmer knows a policy devised by George Osborne to prevent parents from claiming benefits for a third or fourth child is cruel and fails on its own terms. When Starmer stood for leader, he promised to scrap the limit. After all, it imposes poverty on 300,000 kids, and drives another 700,000 further into hardship. Fifty-nine per cent of families affected have at least one parent in work – like the care workers, supermarket workers and cleaners applauded by politicians on porches and balconies during the pandemic. Research has found that it does not increase employment levels, and may actually make it harder to find work, while having no impact on family size. Charities have identified it as one of the single biggest generators of poverty in Britain.”
If Labour isn’t for abolishing child poverty, then what it is it for?
This is the deeper question that’s being revealed and needs to be understood, not just as a bit of parliamentary tactics. These lessons are being understood:
- Labour – when given the clear opportunity – have chosen not to alleviate child poverty
- This is a political choice not an economic one.
- Scottish Labour are not riding to the rescue. Despite posturing as having a different policy, they have none. They have no authority and no agency either within Labour or in their own terms.
- Labour have been completely captured. Yes they are a lesser of two evils but they don’t have a hinterland – they don’t have a significant group within them that will operate as a Left block. The seven MPs who have had the whip withdrawn for six months are effectively removed.
The Labour Party you voted for is a shadow of its former self. They are a folk memory of what Labour was – and by lending them your support you are supporting a very different political project. Realise this.
The binary you are presented with: Labour V Tory or Labour v SNP are not the choices we have.
We are supported only by our readers. We don't have corporate backers and we don't take advertising, so we rely entirely on your support.
Help to support independent Scottish journalism
By continuing the insecurity arising from the cap, playing one impoverished group against another, Labour should realise that they paving the way for Reform and the extreme right in England.
At one time I would have agreed with you that Labour are lesser of two evils, but I’m not so sure now. It’s hard to tell when a party has not been in power what its actions will be like. I think they are just a different shade of evil. It’s called centrism.
WT, I think that thus is well to the right of what Europeans have known as centralism.
It has parallels in Americanc centralism, as shown in Clinton’s attack on welfare. But in a European context it’s conservatism, and not a moderate sort of conservatism
I find it odd that anyone is surprised by Labours lack of principles. Ralph Milibands Parliamentary Socialism gives a clear picture of Labours conservatism from the beginning. Anyone who remembers their position during the miners strike in the 80s or more recently the disappointment of the Blair -Brown years must be drawing conclusions? Just compare the timidity and lack of imagination in the U.K. compared with what is being discussed in France by the New Popular Front
Agreed 100% Cathie
Thanks Mike & co. So sad but so true. This bunch don’t even know what their party is supposed to stand for. Starmer deserves his shameful nickname: Kid Starver!
Correct me if I am wrong but all the Labour MP’s in Scotland voted against SNP amendment. I would confidently bet (but I am not an MP) that they have all voiced opposition to 2 child benefit cap while Tories were in power.
They could even have abstained but to vote against scrapping it shows they must support it and now they are in power it is now their policy.
Labour have prioritised politics over child poverty.
As a born and bred Labour supporter I have long thought exactly what is said in this article. “This is Labour Jim, but not as we know it” as Mr Spock might have said.
Let’s hope that all those previously SNP voters who voted Labour a few weeks ago realise this and return to the SNP in 2026!
Getting rid of the Tories by voting in Tory lite isn’t the answer. Independence is the answer.
I would suggest that the last significant social reforms were made by the Attlee government of 1945. Does anyone agree?
Yes, Imagree.
@Robert, I think 1945 was a quite different legal environment. Successive governments brought in Race Relations (1965+), Equal Pay (1970+), Disability Discrimination (1995+) and more legislation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_and_diversity_(United_Kingdom)#References
There have also been implementations of international treaties bringing about social reforms. Cases brought under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, for example, eventually pressured governments into outlawing forms of corporal punishment.
But the British Empire remains one of the most backwards set of jurisdictions in the world, in several respects.
I agree but somehow 1945 seems to have been a Great Leap Forward. Perhaps rose tinted glasses!
@Attlee, yes, I think there was a significant redrawing of the social contract at the end of WW2, but as far as I know, Attlee’s Labour government did little or nothing to dismantle the ‘engines of privilege’ that have so successfully reasserted social inequality in British jurisdictions today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engines_of_Privilege
Is anyone really surprised?have no expectations for what you think they promised…same old story…
SLab. Standing up for Scotland, or doing as they’re telt from down south? I’m shocked I tell you shocked (/s).
As a labour party member my last ever campaigning looks to have been against Galloway in Rochdale.
No such entity as ”Scottish Labour ” !
The Scottish (sic) Labour MPs voted en mass to maintain the Two-Child welfare Cap and in doing so displayed their complete support for their MP’s salary + expenses and NOT the priorities of their constituents .
All the main UK parties have betrayed their traditional supporters and principles. They are all of them now mere brands, owned by the same ‘asset managers’ . Not one of them will speak up for voters anymore, because they are all parcels of rogues, bought and sold for American gold. That gold finds expression in various forms including the World Economic Forum, a criminal organisation openly committed to absolute ownership and control of the planet and everyone and everything on it. Because that is apparently necessary to make the world a better place (for themselves, at our expense).
This is why whatever party is elected, the same policies are pursued to pour more and more wealth and power into the pockets of the already hyper-rich.
It’s not a far-fetched conspiracy theory. It’s just the truth. Because those not complicit or bought off or deceived into thinking that the WEF is the only route to power, are too frightened to speak out. The WEF is all about ‘partnership’ with government – meaning the privatisation of government ( note the current worldwide rise of fascism). The WEF believes in top-down global governance ( https://globalgovernanceforum.org/ ) rather than national sovereignty. It is pure Orwell. A surprising number of key politicians and others around the world are very closely connected with the WEF- Justin Trudeau is a good example. King Charles III is an enthusiastic supporter, but since when did kings ever really do democracy?
Anyway, here’s Keir Starmer himself, first, addressing the WEF last year – (Insight into ‘Great British Energy’ and the forced industrialisation of the Highlands ?)
https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2023/sessions/leadership-for-the-energy-transformation/
… and then here he is again, freely admitting where his loyalties lie, with those who pay the piper and call the tune. : https://youtu.be/7qI0xQSn8Y0?feature=shared
The saddest fact is that no other UK party will stand up for us either.
It is a conspiracy theory as you provide zero real evidence just assertions – ‘parcels of rogues sold for American gold ‘ – what a load of cliched rubbish. Such baseless condemnation, and indeed by others on this thread, just sounds like sour grapes, over and over again.
I would prefer a more radical Labour party but if Labour are ‘evil’ centrists then so are the SNP as they are politically very similar indeed.
I don’t have to look far to see evidence a-plenty that all our political parties have much the same agenda, and that agenda is also that of the oligarchs. The WEF is a conspiracy hiding in plain sight. But this goes beyond conspiracy to ideology arising out of an addiction to wealth and power. And those with the most are the most addicted, desperate to compete and fight with everyone.
The WEF publicly advocates the power of private wealth over public policy – extending privatisation to everything and everyone. King Charles III is a great supporter of it, as well he might be. He stands to make billions out of ‘Great British Energy’.
But you seem to think I see the SNP as somehow different. I don’t. Sadly they too have bought into all this with their freeports and other policies. I think they were desperate to impress these international ‘investors’ who in reality are just pirates and crooks. They only invest in themselves, at our expense.
@Niemand, from my seat in the stands, the WEF might be an emergent phenomenon rather than a cabal of arch-puppeteers, and the evidence clearly shows many UK politicians will dance for a handful of silver let alone a pocketful of gold.
Nevertheless, it is not hard to find published stories like this one from Declassified UK (who I’ve found very reliable), featuring at least “three senior Labour politicians” and in cameo our old friend poet and activist Benjamin Zephaniah:
The secretive US embassy-backed group cultivating the British left
https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-secretive-us-embassy-backed-group-cultivating-the-british-left/
Did I mention before this group, the :
Counci for Inclusive Capitalism
https://www.inclusivecapitalism.com/
There’s nothing very inclusive about this, founded by Lynn Forester de Rothschild, whose Wikipefia entry is interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Forester_de_Rothschild
At its opening conference, the opening speech was by Prince Charles. It seems to supported by the WEF.
America’s pursuit of a ‘unipolar world, with ‘full spectrum dominance’ is hardly a ‘conspiracy theory’. For a very long time real power in America has been in the hands of the so-called ‘robber barons’ and their successors, oligarchs with links to organised crime. It’s just the way it is. For over a century this model has been exported to the world.
The WEF seems to be an attempt to rise above ideas of national sovereignty altogether. Commercial interests are only ones that matter, whatever the supposed justification. This is all there on the WEF’s own websites. Although Klaus Schwab, its founder, has Swiss nationality (and grew up in Nazi Germany) the organisation is thoroughly American in its conception and ideology. It exists to make the world a better place for its exclusive membership – the only ‘stakeholders’ in its ‘stakeholder capitalism’. The rest of us are simply ‘human resources’.
However I do not believe their planetary coup d’etat, the so-called Great Reset, will be successful because thieves fall out, and those who live by the sword, die by the sword. The world’s oligarchs, like the 19th c colonial powers whose ideology they have inherited, cannot avoid fighting each other.
After a long history of hypocrisy and crimes against humanity, humanity is now turning against the rulers of America, and although there are those in the WEF who seem to see this as an opportunity to take over and rule the entire world, including the US, through de-dollarisation and debt, I don’t think any of this madness is actually sustainable. The Chinese now call the shots and they are certainly not going to kowtow to the US or the west, given their history. Putin has been thrown out of the WEF as a nationalist; he won’t be ceding power to a bunch of oligarchs who are not ‘his’.
We are witnessing the final stages of world economic, political, ecological and ideological collapse. Neither the WEF, nor the UN, nor any international body or corporation is going to save us.
However, one thing the US wars of the last 70 years have demonstrated is that high tech ‘shock and awe’ featuring overwhelming weaponry and ruthlessness, has failed again and again – Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, Afghanistan. And now, Ukraine and Palestine. You cannot win hearts and minds by terrorising and murdering them. Like the dinosaurs, it’s heavy armour, small brain, died out.
Starmer is going to have to wake up to the fact that he cannot serve two masters. We would surely be well advised to build a decentralised, localised, resilient world, starting right here in Scotland. With interconnected,circular, empowering local economies. In fact the opposite of globalism and for-profit totalitarianism.
It’s perfectly do-able. We just need the self-confidence to go for it.
Look, if you really think that Starmer and his cabinet’s main aim is to pursue policies ‘to pour more and more wealth and power into the pockets of the already hyper-rich’ then I cannot help you because it is nonsense. There is nothing wrong with criticising the hidden powers behind capitalism and pointing out how they can influence policy by the default of neo-liberal capitalism being deemed the only way, but the conspiracy theory is the above bit i.e. that people like Starmer are actively in cahoots with them and have no political ambitions to help the poorer in society and generally try and make this country fairer and with greater opportunity and basic functioning, more housing, cleaner rivers, better (nationalised) trains etc etc and all they care about is making the rich, richer.
@Niemand, so if you prefer a moderate view, MySociety (publishers of the popular They Work For You website) have addressed the problem of MP’s outside interests:
“Lack of clarity on the interests and income streams of MPs is a corruption risk. The problem with second jobs and outside interests is less that MPs might be distracted from their main job – but that when they stand in Parliament, they may be representing groups beyond their constituents, asking questions (or not asking questions) depending on their outside work.”
https://www.mysociety.org/2024/01/17/improving-the-register-of-mps-interests/
It is less a case of politicians being “actively in cahoots”, but being employed by outside interested parties. Parliament itself recognises this, and disciplines offenders accordingly, but only in respect of rules set up by the establishment, and under the risible British treason laws (where treason is held to be against the monarch). In my view, British MPs taking money, gifts and/or instruction from foreign states should be guilty of petty treason (at least) and barred from office (at least).
My strong suspicion is that British secret security services and political policing are not going to stop persecuting socialist/environmentalist/peace/republican etc groups and individuals after the election of a Labour government. We may be hearing more about this shortly.
The SNP could of course have abolished the 2 child cap in Scotland before now using devolved benefits powers
They wouldn’t need to if Westminster hadn’t applied the cap in the first place.
And that makes it morally ok for them to do nothing about it? Typical – sitting on their hands and blaming others.
The Scotnat’s strategy for the Holyrood elections, if there is a strategy, seems to be ‘Labour!’ WTF. Bye bye and maybe see you in a decade.