I used to know right -wing ideologue and generally unpleasant creature Dan Hodges. We were both young Labour staffers in the early Blair years and I remember sitting with him having a pint in a pub near Westminster. We were discussing how far he would go to support absolutely anything whatsoever that Tony Blair said and how much dissent was acceptable.
To explore this I asked ‘well what if Blair has an aneurism and says that all the black people have to go?’. ‘Well, if Tony said it’ (the sycophants all called him Tony) ‘then it’s the muddy field for the blacks’ he replied.
It’s taken a few years but we’re nearly there. Labour spends an awful lot more time dog whistling its overt racism than it does on anything that might mistakenly be recognised as social democracy. In fact its not a dog whistle, it’s National Front graffiti from the late 1970s. I didn’t know if he could go lower than ‘that scheme was only for white-skinned refugees‘. He did it with ease.
So there we go, that’s one half of the board, a UK where the most ‘left wing’ government on offer is now actively competing with Reform for voters through the power of overt racism. So I flip my eyes in the other direction and… there’s John Swinney.
He sees the chaos around him and his first and main conclusion is ‘fucking magic – let’s play this for cheap votes and to act as cover for the fact that I literally have nothing to offer’. Swinney has started to sell himself as the antidote to extremism. It’s almost as if he doesn’t realise he’s the cause of extremism.
To understand why, look at his position on the current mess over sex-specific changing facilities in the Scottish public sector. I’m sure his people think saying ‘we completely agree that the law must be followed’ and ‘I absolutely agree with our guidance’ quickly after each other means we won’t notice that he just got asked about it because it’s almost certain his guidance is not legally compliant.
That’s what he was asked about and it was a grown-up question. He was asked about whether the guidance was legal. He answered that legal things are good, and also guidance is good. Tea anyone? It is politics as obfuscation, politics as the act of patronising listeners, politics as a meaningless game. This forked-tongued shit is why no-one trusts politicians.
We saw it over Grangemouth. We saw it over net zero. We see it over tackling poverty. Words flow but they are unlinked to meaning. I think my favourite moment so far was when he and his team were asked ‘do you retain confidence in this Health Board that probably broke the law and then victimised this woman’ and they said ‘yes’. Except then they were asked why they had confidence in the Health Board, and they said ‘because that’s what we do’.
This isn’t a so-so era – this is the darkest, scariest time in my 52 years on this planet
That is the point; that is exactly what they do. Their fundamental purpose is to have confidence in the powerful. Forget who the real victim is, the Scottish Government is a human shield for the perpetrators. Business, quangos, agencies, foreign governments, investors, financial speculators – John has your back. Ordinary people? You get promises, and not many of them.
Swinney is the human embodiment of ‘no, ordinary people, the world is not going to get better for you, not on my watch’. Swinney has been in politics now for three hundred years and yet tell me what he’s for? He has no social mission, no economic mission, no real mission at all. Independence? In what meaningful way?
The truth is that there is little to separate Swinney and Starmer except circumstances. They’re both dull, managerialists without vision or any real sense of what they’re for or how they’re going to go about it. The main difference is their international outlook. Starmer is a born-and-bred Atlanticist while Swinney doesn’t have an international outlook.
Please remember this; Swinney tried to force his party to support the Iraq War. Really. He decided that the place for Scotland was side-by-side with Blair and Bush. He’s pro-Nato! He’s anti-nuclear! He’s anti-Trump! He’s pro-Trump! He’s behaves like moral vacuum whose instincts are to bow to power.
I wouldn’t care so much about any of this if it wasn’t for the first part. If we were in a pretty bland sort of place and things were sort of trundling along in a not-brilliant-not-awful sort of way, that would be one thing. Swinney doesn’t have even the energy or vision of Jack McConnell (who had very little), but McConnell was simply a disappointment in a so-so era.
This isn’t a so-so era. This is the darkest, scariest time in my 52 years on this planet – and when I was a child I used to stare into the western horizon at night hoping it was a sunset and not a nuclear attack on Faslane.
The British Labour Party now represents the politics I have spent my life fighting. We are under full-frontal attack but it is not from the people they say are attacking us. We are under full-spectrum attack by the US and Starmer is in full-on appeasement mode. Russia doesn’t threaten us like this, China doesn’t threaten us like this.
But that’s why Starmer exists. He was created not to beat Corbyn’s comparatively moderate economic policies, Starmer is a child of the US State Department. He was there to maintain Atlanticist foreign policy. His current role is basically to make sure Europe absolutely does not pursue strategic independence from the US. He hopes to get enough concessions from Trump to help keep Europe under the American boot while we wait for change of leadership.
We’re in serious trouble. We need out. We need out of this awful, awful show. We have no domestic opposition to the far right now. There is a picture of a Europe better for this awfulness to have happened and I’m pretty sure Starmer wants that Europe stopped. For someone like me, there is nothing good left in Britain any more. Starmer is finishing that off now.
I need a way out, and when I turn to see who is supposed to be creating that I see… Starmer again. Bald Starmer. In see serial political failure John Swinney standing in front of an army of numbnut advisers, collectively believing they’re good enough.
They are not good enough. They couldn’t blow the lid of a jam jar never mind fashion a way out of Britain for Scotland. In fact, worse than that, this lot as so bereft of vision they probably don’t currently believe that leaving Britain is a good idea. Sure, in principle. But not now.
This is going to get worse and worse – there is no space for a social mission in Britain any more
When I woke up this morning I was going to write a piece for tonight which was about the difference between investing in security and increasing defence spending. I was going to clarify that I don’t think we need higher defence spending to stay safe in Europe, but that we do need to invest in our security systems.
For example, we do not have sufficient cover for a range of intelligence gathering in Europe. We lack satellites, we rely on the US for human intel and for a lot of what is known as ‘sigint’, or intelligence derived from communications interception and analysis. We lack proper coastal defences. We have an infrastructure deficit.
We have this because we’ve always relied in the US for that. I would support increased spending on security as a time-limited investment in back-filling that capacity. I would support a pooled European army for defence purposes only, recognising that it would mainly be travelling the continent helping nations with flooding emergencies and the like. Then I would seek peace through negotiation.
But just after I woke up I read the newspapers and I realised that my calm, rational thinking is like pissing in the wind right now. I mean, The Guardian newspaper is very clearly trying to gaslight me into thinking that Starmer cutting aid is an absolutely necessary evil.
It is not. It is the new politics. The story wasn’t about defence spending – Labour is already committed to 2.5 per cent. The point of the move was to be seen to be anti-foreign aid as a housewarming present for Trump. The idea is that if only Starmer can persuade him to offer a ‘backstop’ over Ukraine then we just need to weather another few years of this until Atlanticism can come back.
It isn’t a necessary evil at all. It is an evil being perpetrated to show some leg to evil people. It is beating up a Pakistani kid to get in with the tough white boys. It is stomach churning and it is now the only politics the UK offers. This is going to get worse and worse. There is no space for a social mission in Britain any more.
I need out. We need out. But Swinney is mediocrity personified. He is never, ever taking us anywhere. Once again we’re going to be presented with ‘step one is vote for John’. But ‘John’ doesn’t have a step two. It’s true he’s the only option. That is why an SNP membership that was worth its salt would get rid of him. Now.
But they won’t. So this is it. We’re in Britain because Swinney is blocking the exit, and Britain is an awful place and getting worse. You tell me what’s left to support. You tell me who to trust. Someone, please, tell me.