Keir Starmer’s call for more Holyrood powers will only help the SNP - Brian Monteith

It would appear the Labour Party in general and Sir Keir Starmer in particular have learned nothing about how to take on the SNP. Yet again we have a Labour leader who thinks the way recover the votes lost to the nationalists over the years is, bizarrely, to strengthen the incentives that make them attractive.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on a visit to Scotland last week

Of all the times to promote his party’s vague “more powers” soundbite that’s in need of credible content, he chose the moment when the SNP is seeking yet another power grab of its own. Instead of focussing on the SNP’s authoritarian streak, Keir Starmer would rather deflect on to his own political vacuum.

This time the SNP is not taking more powers from devolved agencies and centralising them (think police, ambulance and fire services), nor starving local government so power is strengthened in Edinburgh (although it has done that to the tune of £251m). It’s not even receiving powers from Westminster that were once residing in Brussels (thanks to Brexit) – no it’s seeking to maintain controls by maintaining many of the emergency powers Holyrood granted itself to deal with the Coronavirus pandemic.

Those powers were of course agreed during the last parliamentary sitting when there was a cross party consensus that the minority SNP government should be able to act beyond the normal measures to deal with the unknown and incalculable threats of the pandemic. The SNP had no working majority but it was granted the extra powers because of an emergency.

Since then – and with no mention by SNP politicians in the public discourse during the Scottish general election that they would be pressing for the continuation of special emergency powers – they now have a working majority by concluding a coalition agreement with the Scottish Green Party. The Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat opposition parties cannot prevent the SNP/Green coalition imposing the power grab so it will be imposed without cross party support.

This is what Starmer’s full attention should have been focussed on – or does he back such powers becoming permanent?

It is not just the SNP’s zeal for strict and invasive laws that can control us we should worry about – the role of the Scottish Green Party deserves some probing scrutiny as to why such a “liberal” party committed to individual human rights and democratic values should be siding with the means to manage a police state?

And I do not exaggerate. I am writing of the ability of Scottish Government to exercise powers that have seen some of the most ridiculous and controversial impediments to people going about freely, conducting themselves normally and forcing them to behave in ways only approved by Government ministers and policed by people in uniforms. We are not talking of putting people on a naughty step but the denial of liberty and great sometimes ruinous economic costs.

We have seen over nearly two years now the imposition of incoherent and contradictory restrictions on schools, hospitality, churches and all houses of faith while other venues often with more people have had their restrictions reduced. Some places could serve alcohol and others not. Dancing and even singing could be stopped. And we are expected to consent to the politicians responsible for such random and arbitrary restrictions maintaining such options without seeking overwhelming support of Holyrood?

There are two obvious questions the Labour leader has to ask himself on the subject of “more powers”.

The first is set in a purely party political context, why would people want to vote Labour to gain more powers when voting SNP or even Green will deliver the same result? It has always been the threat of the SNP to the Labour Party that has driven the demand for devolution. Yes, there have been some political theorists and romantics favouring a federal arrangement or something akin to it (across all parties actually), but the political imperative was Labour’s political survival. The SNP had to be seen off and devolution was thought to be the way to do that.

It did not work and in the past – and it will not work now or in the future. People may have noticed the powers Holyrood has now are far, far greater than when it started in 1999 – has that halted the SNP’s growth and continued rule?

Advocating more powers like the Liberal Democrats already promote is not going to lead to a Labour survival. It is as empty a political posture as would be Sir Keir Starmer taking the knee at the Scottish border wearing a kilt. There are no mass demonstrations for more powers other than for the full powers coming from secession – not greater devolution – and even these demonstrations are now smaller than a Cowdenbeath home game.

The second question is why would the SNP demands for breaking up Britain suddenly end – I don’t believe in secession but simply creating Devo Max or some derivative thereof will not stop nationalist demands for full sovereign power. If all that is left is at Westminster is defence and foreign affairs what happens when the foreign policy is opposed by an SNP administration (as it undoubtedly would). The demands to leave the UK would not abate – and it would be a shorter leap.

I fear Sir Keir Starmer is really looking to open the door to an unholy alliance with the SNP at Westminster after the next General election – and that spells danger for everyone – and will only create the perverse incentive of voting SNP rather than Labour. Are there no Labour people in Scotland who cannot see the obvious flaws and tell their leader to steer a different course?

Brian Monteith is editor of ThinkScotland and a former member of the Scottish and European Parliaments.