A culture shock awaits Labour candidates

Scottish Labour’s newest election candidate is based in London

This is reminiscent of the Blair Babes who were parachuted into seats in the 1990s much to the disgust of the local communities.

They were what were expected to be safe Labour seats. Yorkshire took very unkindly to having a candidate from Lancashire foisted on it.

The new batch being parachuted into Scotland seems to be from an area where they believe civilisation stops at Watford Gap.

The culture shock is going to be something to behold. Are they coming with their own activists, or has Douglas Alexander managed to find some of them in his travails around Scotland in the last few months?

Interesting times for sure. Jenny Macdonald

Well, Churchill was a Liberal MP for Dundee, so you can see where the English Labour Party in Scotland gets its blatant anti-democracy ideas from. North Britain, a colonial outpost of London.

The guy from Medical Aid for Palestinians surely must recognise the irony of the situation? Patching up Palestinians who’ve been injured by British-made ordinances paid for by US loans to the Israeli state, which Starmer supports. Sandy Allan

Nothing new, a regular placing in seats in the west of Scotland, local Labour constituency parties “offered” a candidate to satisfy

London Labour, also done by councils to keep control. Wilson Dunlop

Absolutely ridiculous that Labour can’t find one local member to step up. Does that suggest Labour in Scotland is far weaker than the bombastic, arrogant rhetoric we hear from the likes of Sarwar, Baillie, Shanks etc?

“Ward is the chief executive of the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians”. How anyone who does this can still be a member of a party that is complicit in collective punishment which is a war crime against the people of Palestine and would keep selling arms to Israel is beyond me. Conor Savage stood for Plaid in my local area.

Dr B Griffiths

Looks like Labour are just Tory lite, but with the normalised corruption being the English Labour norm now. They don’t even try to pretend that Scotland matters. Tory Boy Starmer is an absolute liability to Labour. Mike C

Ruth Wishart: The guard may change but roadblocks to independence stay the same

We can always depend on Ruth to give us an interesting and enlightening article. Thanks. D Ross and “ray of sunshine” in the same sentence will keep me chuckling for quite a while.

Mary Clark

The guard hasn’t changed either, Ruth.

Lorna Campbell