Labour dispute

There is simply no reason whatsoever to trust the Labour Party at Westminster to deliver the policies that the two MSPs claim to support and that the constituents who vote Labour in Scotland expect, indeed depend on, their politicians to provide.

The two MSPs insist that the “spare room subsidy” or “single occupancy” (bedroom tax) will be abolished by Labour.

Not only are they unable to guarantee the execution of a policy that is the clear and overwhelming demand of Scottish Labour supporters and electors, and unable to guarantee it not just now, but ever: they cannot even guarantee that the Labour Party will support the abolition policy in Westminster.

The reasons are not hard to find. The removal of the “bedroom tax” is not a policy that will stand with Middle England in the South-east or London and therefore it will not be a policy that will fly in Britain.

The Scotsman leader (16 September) may find the government “single occupancy” policy an “abominable and degrading attack on the most vulnerable in society” but it is not political timing that prevents Ed Miliband from standing up for the vulnerable, but political calculation.

Your leader merely reminds us that at some point unionists will be obliged to recognise that unionism is not a cure-all, or cure-anything; that unionism is part of the problem rather than the whole solution.

Meanwhile, voting Labour in Scotland is transparently an  exercise in futility.

John S Warren

Tulipan Court

Callander