General election: Scotland deserves better than Keir Starmer's Tony Blair tribute act – Keith Brown

The only guaranteed outcome of a Labour Westminster government is the Tory Westminster government that always follows it

Simply getting rid of the Tories at this year’s general election cannot be as good as it gets for Scotland. The prospect of a Labour government offering no meaningful change to cruel Tory policies is just not good enough. We need more than just a change of tone. We need a change of direction.

However, the nature of the broken Westminster system and its political parties would have you believe real change isn’t possible. It is – just not from the very parties trying to defend the outdated, out-of-touch and out-of-ideas institution that has failed Scotland so badly for so long.

While it’s clear folk are sick to the back teeth of the Tories (over a decade of lies, corruption and economic incompetence has hurt people beyond belief), you’d also be hard-pushed to find anyone enthused by the lack of policies and vision from Labour. And why would they be?

Tony Blair and Keir Starmer took part in the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change's Future of Britain Conference in July last year (Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA)

After all, just for starters, Keir Starmer made ten promises to Labour members to get elected as Labour leader; but he has abandoned one after another in an attempt to win over Tory voters in England. The promises have now even been ‘curiously’ removed from Labour's website.

But, don’t get me wrong, Labour does have policies – they're just not keen on listing them because they're not much different from the Tories’. Starmer isn't only taking Scotland's voters for granted, he's taking his own Labour members for granted. If he can’t be trusted to honour his commitments to his own party, why on earth would voters trust a word he says? It’s become nigh-on impossible for anyone to identify anything that Starmer – the supposed ‘opposition’ leader – stands for.

Even journalists are saying their tax policies "more or less ape the Tories", while Starmer has been praising Margaret Thatcher. And, just like the Tories, Starmer is now backing Brexit despite the abundance of evidence of the damage it is doing to the economy and the fact Scotland voted strongly against it.

Labour’s health spokesperson has even attacked the British Medical Association for being “hostile” to UK Labour plans for the NHS; he’s said the NHS would be “wide open” to the private sector under Labour; and he’s echoed Tory language by saying the “NHS will go bankrupt if it doesn’t reform”.

And, when it comes to yet more painful austerity cuts, Starmer is on the Tory page again. As Sky News journalist Beth Rigby reported, he “dodged the question” when asked if he would commit to not cutting public service spending further after the next election. She then wrote that “all of it left me asking myself the question: Vote Labour, get Tory austerity?”

Is it any wonder that dozens of Labour councillors are quitting the party, with some citing the “right-wing rhetoric” and “mirroring” of Tories by Starmer and his shadow Cabinet? Polling even shows one in six Labour councillors are considering resignation because of Starmer.

On top of all of this, he wants a return to a government like Tony Blair’s. Let that sink in – he wants to return to a time when the first Labour leader in over half a century lost a parliamentary election in Scotland – to the SNP. And, let's not forget that in his first year in power, Blair's government began cutting social security for lone parents and two years after that they cut benefits for the disabled. And, as former Guardian journalist Jon Stone has detailed, these weren't the only Tory policies Labour adopted over 13 years…

So, do we really want another Westminster government like Blair’s? A Labour government that took us into the Iraq war by blindly following what the US administration wanted? We have already seen Starmer following the same agenda when you look at his response to the tragic situation in Gaza – he effectively sacked Labour frontbenchers for voting for a ceasefire.

This inability to stand by principles and promises is inherent within the political parties hell-bent on propping up the broken Westminster system. Parties so scared of each other that they have become more closely aligned than ever before. And the cost of this pathetic meeting of minds between Labour and the Tories is being footed by ordinary working people who are suffering a Westminster-made, cost-of-living crisis and facing the worst living standards since modern records began in the 1950s.

With no plan (or intention, it seems) to truly change things for households across the country, it could not be clearer that Starmer is taking Scotland for granted – believing people will just give in, accept the damage Westminster is doing and believe this is as good as it gets. Well, it’s not.

Scotland doesn't have to choose between Starmer's 'Tory-lite' or Rishi Sunak's classic Tory – in the full knowledge that the only guaranteed outcome of all Labour Westminster governments is the Tory Westminster government that always follows them. Scotland can escape the Westminster roulette table of two parties wedded to a right-wing consensus.

By voting SNP at the Westminster general election this year, you can move Scotland forward instead of going round and round on the broken Westminster roundabout. You can vote SNP to make sure Scotland’s voice is heard. You can vote SNP to build a stronger, fairer and more successful Scotland for everyone who lives here.

Keith Brown is the SNP MSP for Clackmannanshire and Dunblane and his party’s depute leader