Pete Wishart
SNP MP FOR PERTH & PERTHSHIRE NORTH Working towards a fairer society
I wrote a piece for my blog last Friday in which I warned that with a second independence referendum soaring up the likelihood scale, the next campaign for the union is not going to be a pretty one.
It is palpable, particularly within the Westminster bubble, that their membership and MPs are growing tired of what they see as‘pandering to Scotland’ and that the next campaign will be a‘no more Mr Nice Guy’full frontal type affair.
Decide for yourselves whether it is down to my powers of prediction or the pace of change in politics at the moment, but some of what I was warning of has already come to pass.
I said, for example, that threats would be raised about our devolved Parliament being curtailed and – lo and behold – at their gathering in Glasgow at the weekend – there was a fringe debate on Brexit during which there was actually a discussion as to whether the UK government could repeal the Scotland Act and abolish Holyrood.
And, of course, Theresa May came north to warn us about getting ideas above our station, repeating the mantra that the SNP should ‘get on with day job’and reiterating scare stories about the Scottish Government’s stewardship of important areas such as the health service. Ironic, really, since while she was in Scotland lecturing us, there were quarter of a million people on the streets in London protesting about cuts to the NHS in England and Wales. Remind me again who should be focusing on their day job?
Meanwhile, the Scottish Government really was very much getting on with the task in hand with an announcement that almost £58 million will be spent mitigating the harmful impact of the UK government’s welfare cuts on households across Scotland.
There probably isn’t a clearer example of the Scottish Government working extremely hard – despite having one arm tied behind its back – to make Scotland a fairer society than the one that Westminster wants to impose on us.
The £57.9 million being made available to local authorities is made up of £47 million to fully mitigate the bedroom tax for more than 70,000 households and £10.9 million to help mitigate other UK government policies such as the benefit cap and local housing allowance rates.
While the Scottish Government is valiantly doing what it can to roll back the Tories’austerity agenda, the Brexit mist that has descended on the UK government has them increasingly harking back to a golden age that never was, in a manner that is becoming, frankly, delusional.
In just the past few days we have seen Tory ministers suggesting that we can cut trade deals with Commonwealth countries to launch Empire 2.0 and that there was nothing whatsoever in the whole of the 20th century for which Britain should be ashamed.
Frankly, I’d rather make history than rewrite it.