In these sad times, who will stand up and speak up for the poor?

FOR anyone of progressive mind, whether aligned to one party or not, these are sad times, as we see a new right-wing government elected on a minority vote gloating over the disarray of its main opposition. Meanwhile, many of those on the opposition side look to rebrand Labour, forgetting Harold Wilson’s famous dictum: “The Labour Party is a campaigning party, or it is nothing.” Most worrying is the siren-calls of “right full-rudder” from the former high priests of Blairism as they take a short break from their directorships. Indeed their zeal for collecting such directorships is redolent of nothing so much as the final scene of Animal Farm, and does little to dissuade the public that the sole aim of most politicians is self-enrichment. As we enter the next five years we search in vain for figures such as Scottish politician of the calibre of Tom Johnston, John Smith and Charles Kennedy, who never lost sight of the aim of politics being to enrich your fellow citizens rather than yourself.

Commentators now chastise the Labour Party for “banging on about food banks and zero-hours contracts”. It seems we are in an age when the non-wealthy are to be ignored and deemed undeserving of attention or support. It would not surprise that a think-tank is looking to “rebrand” the workhouse for the 21st century.

There seems to exist in this postThatcherite era a yawning chasm of understanding, a huge empathy deficit, and a sad lack of selfawareness, of the “there but for the grace....” variety. Perhaps if Pastor Martin Niemoller was still alive, his famous text would now read: “I did not speak out against zero-hours contracts – because I was not on one. I did not speak out against food banks – because I did not use one. I did not speak out against reductions in benefits – because I was not on them. Then one day I became poor – and there was no-one left to speak for me”. Robert Dey, Carlton, Craigie Knowes Road, Perth.