Liz Kendall dismisses Scottish nationalism because she doesn’t “believe it is right to raise people’s national identity over and above what we share in common as human beings” ("I think that what's happened to Labour in Scotland has happened over a long period of time", News, August 23).
I’m sure many people, albeit for different reasons, would disagree with her. In fact, one of the candidates for the Labour leadership certainly does. Back in June, this candidate advocated a “strict”, so-called “Australian-style, points-based” system to stop more immigrants arriving in the UK and claimed that people had every right to be afraid of those desperate refugees “scrambling onto lorries” at Calais.
The candidate’s name? Liz Kendall.
Whatever happened to “what we share in common as human beings”, Ms Kendall? And why does your brand of solidarity extend as far as Dundee but, bizarrely, stops at Dover?
David Kelly,
Edinburgh
Liz Kendal's responses to Tom Gordon's questions reveal much about Metropolitan (New) Labour's head-in-the-sand response to events in Scotland. Liz says Labour "lost touch" with Scotland, but does not elaborate on which issues in Scotland they have lost touch with. Later on in the article she states she is only interested in "ideas, principles and values", but fails to mention that Metropolitan Labour voted for Welfare cuts prior to the May election and abstained in the last budget vote.
She displays the ongoing London Labour myopic view of Scotland: that it's all about the combating the Tories and just being a credible alternative to the Tories! New Labour have been "Tory-lite" for years and "Red Tories" during the referendum! Does she really know what has just happened in Scotland? The Westminsterite parties have one MP each from Scotland. The Tories in Scotland have been marginalised since the demise of John Major. The" branch party" lost 41 out of 42 MPs last May. And she merely splutters they have "lost touch". The issues around Independence, the Vow, federalism, devo-max do not seem to have registered with her at all. Or is she simply in denial? Yet, when asked about further devolved powers to Holyrood she identifies even now no additional specific policy areas to devolve to Holyrood. She side steps on to local devolution. What she means is that Westminster should circumvent Holyrood. That is not a solution. Westminster means whichever UK party is in power. Fully devolved powers and the required fiscal back-up need to come to Holyrood to enable the Scottish Parliament to undertake its own local devolution. Then Scots can have a government it has voted for, a government which mirrors the way civil Scotland has voted. Better still, Independence is the full safeguard.
She does not agree with Nicola Sturgeon's politics and by implication the SNP. At the last Westminster election 50% of the electorate in Scotland did. At least Liz did not repeat Gordon Brown's nostrum "pooling and sharing". What that really means, one could argue, is actually "pulling and sharing". Pulling the resources, tax yields from Scotland and sharing out austerity in return!
If, or more likely, when London Labour splits after "Labour for the Common Good" effect a Putsch against Corbyn, then, it will be Labour no more. Does it really matter? They only have one MP in Scotland. They are de facto "no more".
John Edgar,
Blackford
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