Why I’ll vote Tory

FOR more than 30 years I pounded pavements and knocked on doors in all weathers, campaigning for the party I loved. I was a holder of every level of office of the voluntary Labour Party at one time or another – and then became an MP and later a transport minister under Tony Blair.

But next month, for the first time, I will not be voting for Labour. Instead, I will be backing Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.

And I hope Labour and former Labour voters throughout Scotland will do the same. The reason is clear: quite simply Jeremy Corbyn, the present leader of UK Labour, cannot and must not be trusted with the security of our nation. Nor, frankly, can he be trusted with safeguarding the Union from further attempts to divide it, because it is clear it means very little to him and his cohorts.

Corbyn has plunged Labour back to the days when the Trotskyist Militant tendency was a powerful force within the Labour movement – and one that Corbyn, then a backbencher, wholeheartedly supported.

As a young Labour member in Glasgow Cathcart – which I would go on to represent as an MP – I spent months leading the investigation into the activities of Militant in my own back yard. There was intimidation, legal action, counter-legal action and, finally, a year later, an intense two-day hearing at which I presented the evidence against eight local members, including a local councillor.

Revolution

Every one of them was expelled from the party. But such action, though taken by party members across the UK, was not universally welcomed.

In Islington, the local Labour MP, Corbyn, opposed all expulsions, even of those who believed, like Militant, that violent revolution, not democracy, was the way to improve the lot of working people. Corbyn became secretary of Stop The Witch Hunt – set up to oppose such harsh treatment of their Trotskyist pals.

Neil Kinnock’s reforms, and then John Smith’s and finally Blair’s, saw Labour transformed from a dysfunctional, sectarian discussion group to a party of government.

Today, as Labour leader and potentially our next Prime Minister, Corbyn presides over an organisation where every kind of Trot, anarchist and Marxist is welcome. Some have become candidates in safe and winnable seats.

Every one of those we went to such lengths to expel would be welcomed back into Corbyn’s Labour Party with open arms. It’s not just his own party members Corbyn is betraying. In Scotland, we were told time and time again the 2014 independence referendum would settle the longrunning sore that had scarred Scottish politics for decades.

Both sides – the UK Government and the SNP Government – signed what was pompously referred to as the Edinburgh Agreement, which committed them to respecting and abiding by the result of the referendum.

Naturally, the SNP reneged on that promise as soon as the result was announced.

It started rewriting the rules that had been agreed before polling day in September 2014; a new phrase entered the political lexicon: a ‘material change in circumstance’ would justify the SNP ditching its ‘once in a generation’ commitment repeated so often during the campaign.

Brexit was its preferred excuse for pursuing a second referendum but, if it had not been that, it would have found some other reason – austerity or the renewal of Trident were mooted as possible ‘material changes’ to justify pursuit of the only thing Nationalists care about – independence.

But surely the UK Government, which has the legal say on whether such a referendum can be held, would say no? Theresa May did just that, as did her successor, Johnson.

But if Corbyn emerges as our Prime Minister after December 12, he will say yes.

He has made it clear he has no love for the Union that binds our family of nations together. A man who has never failed to offer comfort to Britain’s enemies – whether the IRA, the Islamist terrorists of Hamas, or Iran or Russia or Cuba or Venezuela – can hardly be expected to feel any affection for the UK.

When hundreds of Labour MPs representing English and Welsh constituencies made the journey to Glasgow one week before the independence referendum to help campaign for a No vote, Corbyn and his hard-Left allies found something, anything, more pressing to do in their constituencies.

He understands that his own failures as a politician will prevent him from leading his party to an overall majority at the General Election, so he will need the SNP’s support to form a government.

The Nationalists will be only too happy to put Corbyn into No 10, provided he agrees to give them the authority to hold that second divisive and unnecessary Scexit referendum. Corbyn and his closest ally, John McDonnell, have said they will not stand in the way of such a request.

Extremism

Endangering the Union will be just the start. Together, Corbyn and McDonnell represent a strand of Left-wing politics alien to Labour. Giants of the movement – Harold Wilson, Gordon Brown, Blair, Jim Callaghan, Nye Bevan and the great Clem Attlee – would not recognise the engine for extremism Labour has become over the past four years.

Labour is no longer run by people who understand the challenges and aspirations of working-class people in Scotland. Instead, the party is managed by middle-class intellectuals such as Seumas Milne, Corbyn’s chief spin doctor, an apologist for the dictatorship of East Germany in the days of the Cold War and someone who tries to justify Russia’s invasion and annexation of Ukraine.

Another senior adviser, Andrew Murray, was a member of the Communist Party until he started working for the Labour leader, and an apologist for the corrupt dictatorship of North Korea.

But traditional Labour voters, like my late parents, wanted nothing to do with such extremism. They believed the party understood working people and reflected their values of patriotism and fairness. Love of one’s country is anathema to today’s party.

There are not as many Labour voters in Scotland today as in the past, but those who still hold a candle for the party need to ask themselves some serious questions about Corbyn. Can they trust an organisation, some of whose candidates continue to spout racist, anti-Semitic hatred?

Can they trust a shadow chancellor who called for members of the Provisional IRA to be ‘honoured’?

Can they trust the judgment of a leader who, when presented with the evidence of Russia’s complicity in the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, suggested sending a sample of the nerve agent used to the Kremlin and asking if it was one of theirs?

I never believed the day would come – but, in this election, I will be voting Conservative in order to protect the country I love.