Nats’ No2 calls on workers to spread chaos
THE SNP’S new deputy Westminster leader has urged strikers to bring the country to its knees.
Scots are facing weeks of disruption to schools, hospitals and the transport network as part of ongoing wage disputes – but the Scottish Government insists there is no money available to meet inflation-boosted pay claims.
However, Mhairi Black has incited more workers to walk out in a bid to heap pressure on ministers on both sides of the Border. Her inflammatory call to arms came shortly before she was elected last week as Stephen Flynn’s deputy, widely seen as a move by Nationalist MPs to plot a different course to the Holyrood party – and a challenge to Nicola Sturgeon’s authority.
Speaking on a recent edition of the Northern Irish podcast Youth Voice, Miss Black praised the industrial action by rail workers that has caused months of misery for travellers and suggested it should be a blueprint for others.
The Paisley and Renfrewshire South MP said: ‘When you see what the train drivers have done, and how they’ve been able to – quite rightly – assert themselves and be able to get across, “Here’s what we think isn’t fair, and here’s why we think it’s not fair, and we’re all going to unite until you do something about it”, that’s so powerful.
It’s the one thing that no government can turn a blind eye from, which is why they throw so much energy at going, “Look at this terrible disruption, look at this. This is shocking”. It’s because it works, that’s why.’
Backing calls for large pay rises, she added: ‘This cost of living crisis – it’s actually not. It’s a cost of greed crisis.
‘There is plenty to go about, it’s just that we have such inequality that there is a small minority in control of the of the vast majority of resources.
‘So if I could predict anything, my hopeful prediction would be that people will get more active and start demanding better because unless you demand it politicians aren’t going to give you it.’
Scottish Conservative chairman Craig Hoy said last night: ‘Nicola Sturgeon and her education secretary will be tearing their hair out at Mhairi Black’s call for more militant industrial action by unions when they are trying to resolve the first teachers’ strike in almost 40 years.
‘With a host of other strikes and threats of industrial action across Scotland, Black’s naive, studentpolitics rhetoric highlights how unsuited the SNP’s Westminster deputy leader is to her new role.’
The Scottish Government declined to comment.
‘Naive, student politics rhetoric unsuited to role’
THE prize for least sincere tweet of the week must go to Nicola Sturgeon for her reaction last Tuesday night to Stephen Flynn’s election as the new SNP Westminster leader, with Mhairi Black as his deputy.
‘A truly formidable team. Looking forward to working with them both,’ she assured us.
Behind the dutiful platitudes, though, we know quite the opposite is true. The First Minister will be quietly seething at the election of Mr Flynn by Nationalist MPs.
After all, she did everything in her power to stop him by persuading Sturgeon loyalist Alison Thewliss to stand against the Aberdeen South MP at the eleventh hour, just as his coronation beckoned.
Even more telling than the First Minister’s intervention, though, was its abject and humiliating failure. SNP MPs ignored her pleas – and her candidate – by electing Mr Flynn regardless.
This tells us much about the waning influence of Nicola Sturgeon, who once had a vice-like grip on her party.
Mr Flynn was one of a number of MPs furious at his predecessor Ian Blackford’s handling of the sexual harassment claims made against their colleague Patrick Grady by a young SNP staffer.
Mr Blackford, inexplicably, was more concerned with shoring up an MP who had abused his position than the welfare of his victim. It was an unforgivable lack of judgment that ultimately played a huge part in Mr Blackford’s defenestration. By backing, rather than sacking, Ian Blackford in the summer – presumably on the grounds of his slavish loyalty to her – the First Minister displayed equally poor judgment, as well as antagonising many of her Westminster MPs.
Mr Flynn’s election will not lance the boil. It will further expose the growing SNP splits. All is not well among the SNP’s Westminster cohort. They are a divided bunch.
We can see that from the rival camps’ anonymous briefings in The Scottish Mail on Sunday today. Team Flynn are pushing the message that his predecessor was stale and would have lost a vote of confidence among MPs. Team Blackford/Sturgeon, meanwhile, are painting Mr Flynn as an intellectual lightweight, who will quickly be exposed as out of his depth.
Time will tell whether Mr Flynn lives down to their expectations – but the pessimism is not groundless. Inexcusably for an Aberdeen MP, he is all over the place on energy policy.
As well as twice changing his position on windfall tax, he was caught on record not knowing what CCUS – Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage – stands for.
Then, in a newspaper interview on Friday, he professed his wholehearted support for Nicola Sturgeon’s opposition to oil and gas, having previously, reportedly, described her hostility to the industry as ‘crazy’.
You might expect this level of ignorance and inconsistency from a backbench MP representing a Central Belt seat. But coming from the SNP’s new Westminster leader, who represents a North-East constituency, it’s not just embarrassing, it’s alarming.
There’s little else in Mr Flynn’s short parliamentary career – he was first elected to Westminster at the 2019 general election – to inspire much confidence.
Early on in the pandemic, nearby Scottish Conservative MSP Alexander Burnett had to step in on behalf of one of Mr Flynn’s constituents – on a key issue relating to the shielding requirements for elderly and vulnerable people – because he had failed to respond to repeated requests to help.
He was also caught out foolishly scaremongering about the financial support being offered by the UK Government at the beginning of the Covid crisis. Mr Flynn complained that there had been ‘complete and continued silence’ from the Treasury on relief for those employed in the oil and gas sector. He was quickly put in his place, not by the then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak but by his SNP colleague, the Scottish energy minister Paul Wheelhouse.
Not only was his bogus suggestion that the industry wasn’t covered by the Chancellor’s crucial job retention scheme thoroughly debunked, but Mr Wheelhouse confirmed the UK and Scottish governments had been working closely on how best to support the sector.
Mr Flynn’s decision to choose Mhairi Black as his deputy is also sure to raise some eyebrows in Bute House and beyond.
Her ‘gaun yersel’ rallying cry to striking workers everywhere is not the first indication that she’s something of a loose cannon. But it’s hugely unhelpful to the First Minister as she grapples with multiple strikes and strike threats across Scotland’s public sector.
While Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville is busy telling teaching unions their demands for a 10 per cent pay rise are unaffordable, the SNP’s Westminster No2 is gleefully telling them to dig in for every last penny.
This is the kind of naïve posturing you can indulge in if you’re never likely to be in the position of having to make difficult choices. But not when you hold a leadership role in a party of government.
So it speaks volumes for Stephen Flynn’s judgment – or the lack of talent on the SNP benches – that Mhairi Black finds herself where she is.
The splits within the SNP are not confined to personality – they
The First Minister will be quietly seething at the election of Mr Flynn
She did everything in her power to stop him at the eleventh hour
encompass policy too – and they spell trouble for Nicola Sturgeon.
The First Minister’s decision to abandon the North Sea oil and gas industry to cosy up to her Holyrood coalition partners, the Scottish Greens, has dismayed some in her party and enraged communities across the North-East.
It’s also foolhardy at a time when Putin’s appalling invasion of Ukraine has brought the need for energy security to the fore.
We all recognise the need for a transition to renewables but we don’t have the capacity to turn off the taps in the North Sea straight away. SNP politicians know this which, perhaps, explains why so many of them – including, in a rare example of unanimity, Stephen Flynn and Nicola Sturgeon – have been peddling the myth that Scotland is home to 25 per cent of Europe’s offshore wind resource.
Then there’s Nicola Sturgeon’s controversial gender reform legislation, which she is hell-bent on forcing through the Scottish parliament before Christmas.
It’s not just the likes of Joanna Cherry at Westminster who are opposed to these proposals, which women’s groups and the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls warn could endanger safety. There is considerable opposition among Nationalist MSPs too, one of whom, Ash Regan, resigned from government over it.
The First Minister’s decision to make the gender reform Bill a whipped vote was wrong in principle, because a conscience issue like this ought to be a free vote. But the fact that nine of her MSPs rebelled at stage one is very telling about her influence on her party.
She once bestrode the SNP at Holyrood and Westminster alike; but no longer. Stephen Flynn’s election is both a symptom of – and aggravating factor in – her weakening grip.