The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Blaming Tories for Britain’s ills is easy – what voters also need are remedies
Remember when politics was uplifting? When there was heated but respectful debate – each group of politicians arguing for their own ideas with passion and belief, not just having a go at the other side?
No, me neither.
However, there were elements of all these positive attributes in the past. And there still are, across the party spectrum.
The danger is that we are entering a period up to the next general election when UK politics will amount to little more than a blame game.
We saw this played out in last week’s Autumn Statement by the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt.
No one can doubt there is an awful lot to allocate blame for, between big spending cuts, tax rises, high inflation, and households struggling with energy bills.
The scariest economic news was contained in the report by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility.
Living standards in the UK are due to tumble by 7% between now and 2023-24, wiping out the growth of the last eight years.
A recession (which is to say shrinkage) in the economy will last for more than a year.
Unemployment is forecast to rise by over half a million.
So what has caused this sorry mess? Mr Hunt insists it is “made in Russia” – because of the energy and economic shocks inflicted by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine – and that recovery will be “made in Britain”.
Labour blames the infamous minibudget of the short-lived administration of Liz Truss for inflicting a lasting hit to the British economy.
According to the Resolution Foundation thinktank, this cost the country a staggering £30 billion: a hole now requiring to be filled by cutting spending and increasing tax.
It is the exact opposite of what the former chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, promised in September.
The SNP agrees with Labour, but also points to wider issues such as Brexit and being out of the European single market, making the case that “independence is the only way to keep Scotland safe from Tory cuts and Brexit decline”.
No doubt all these factors have played their part in brewing the economic storm we are living through.
Each problem will be making the rest worse than they would otherwise have been.
However, I suspect most people will buy the arguments of the opposition parties and point their finger at the Conservative government as being the main culprit.
After all, according to a new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the UK is facing the worst downturn among major economies next year.
We are forecast to have a recession that much of the rest of the world will avoid.
It stands to reason that the cause of such uniquely adverse impacts in this country must be “made at Westminster”.
The UK Government has to be held responsible for that.
On the other hand, politics ought to amount to a lot more than the allocation of blame.
Regardless of who took us here, we need to hear from opposition politicians about what they would do to get us out.
I’ll always be favourable to a Labour rather than a Tory government. And I follow politics pretty closely. But I have to confess to not knowing much about the plans of Keir Starmer as prime minister.
What I do know is that parties aspiring to government have to communicate a positive vision, with the practical policies to match. Think Labour in 1945, 1964 and 1997. Or the SNP in the run-up to winning office in 2007.
It is always tempting for politicians, but the tearing down of incumbents is never enough.
Pity the columnist having to file on the eve of the UK Supreme Court judgment about whether the Scottish Parliament can legislate for an independence referendum without the agreement of the UK Government.
We don’t even know if the justices of the court will make a ruling on the basis of the Bill that has been referred to them by Scottish ministers.
They may say they would only state a definitive position on legislation that has been enacted at Holyrood.
As of 9.45am today, we will have some answers.
What is at stake is the extent to which the union between Scotland and England is a voluntary arrangement. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the willingness of
UK is facing the worst downturn among major economies next year
the UK to put its future on the democratic line in 2014 contributed to the No campaign’s success at that time.
By the same token, if Scotland has no pathway out of the union agreed by ministers in London as well as Edinburgh, that could have the effect of boosting support for independence.
Imagine if Brussels had told the UK Government it wasn’t allowed to hold a referendum on EU membership?
If the union isn’t secured by consent, it will never be secure.