LABOUR LA-LA LAND
McDonnell: I’ll hand Scotland £70billion extra
SHADOW Chancellor John McDonnell yesterday launched a savage attack on the SNP’s economic failure as he pledged a ‘socialist’ Labour government would hand an extra £70billion to Scotland.
In a speech to Scottish Labour’s spring conference in Dundee, he said that Scotland’s economy is ‘stagnating’ under the SNP.
He promised Labour’s spending plans would provide an extra £70billion to the Scottish Government over a decade.
Under the Nationalists, he claimed Scotland’s economy was ‘stagnating’, while fuel poverty is ‘endemic’ and health inequalities persist.
He told party activists: ‘There has been nothing done in the last ten years by the SNP to grow the economy, to tackle the blight of poverty that is scarring the whole of Scotland. Both north and south lives are being destroyed and millions have been left in despair, and it is thanks to the failed economic dogma of neoliberalism and austerity.
‘Austerity is a political choice, it’s not an economic necessity. And the Tories and the SNP, they chose austerity. We choose socialism, we choose the alternative.’
He also claimed that polling suggests Labour is closing in on the SNP and is ‘coming for power’.
He claimed that the six seats the party gained in Scotland was down to ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and our inspiring manifesto’.
In his speech to close a threeday conference dominated by debate about Labour’s approach to Brexit, he said Scotland will decide at the next election whether there is a Labour or Tory government.
The funding boost includes an extra £3billion a year in Barnett consequentials – cash that comes to Scotland as a result of UK spending decisions – amounting to £30billion over ten years. Mr McDonnell also said Labour’s £250billion National Transformation fund would see £20billion spent in Scotland over a decade, which could help ‘rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and deliver key investments such as extending HS2 to Scotland’.
A UK National Investment Bank could provide another £20billion in Scotland over ten years, helping small and medium-size businesses.
Mr McDonnell said: ‘Our commitments over a decade could mean an additional £70billion for the Scottish economy.’
And he compared the spending from Labour’s planned UK Investment Bank with the SNP’s ‘measly £340million’ of initial capital for the ‘so-called Scottish Investment Bank’.
Mr McDonnell claimed all the money would be provided from tackling tax avoidance and ‘making the wealthy pay their way’, with ‘those with the broadest shoulders’ forced to pay a greater share.
He told the conference: ‘We’re coming for power and we will seize it in Scotland as we will in the rest of the UK.’
An SNP spokesman said: ‘John McDonnell can’t be trusted on anything he says when it comes to Scotland. The Shadow Chancellor has said a Labour government would scrap the bedroom tax and restore housing benefit – both of which are already being mitigated by the Scottish Government, and that Labour would review Universal Credit – which the Scottish Government is already doing.’
‘We’re coming for power’