Starmer sounds just like a Tory minister

Sir, – Keir Starmer made it pretty clear during his recent TV interview by the BBC’S Martin Geissler that even if the UK Supreme Court ruled in favour of a Scottish independence referendum he would continue to oppose it.

The Labour leader has, of course, already made it crystal clear that even though the Scottish electorate has voted overwhelmingly in election after election for independence-supporting parties, if he was prime minister he would follow the Johnson, Truss, Sunak line and under no circumstances sanction a referendum.

In other words, it is not what the people want that counts, it is what Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak want.

On the same TV programme Sir Keir made a brief reference to Brexit: “We don’t want open borders. Freedom of movement is gone and it is not coming back, and I think we are recruiting too many people from overseas into, for example, the NHS.”

These words could have come out of the mouth of any Tory minister and surely tell us all we need to know about the mindset and little Englander insularity of today’s Labour Party hierarchy.

Little wonder that former Labour MSP Neil Findlay labelled Keir Starmer’s statement “dog whistle politics”.

Alan Woodcock. Osborne Place, Dundee.