We do not send SNP MPs to Westminster to enjoy themselves
READ MORE: Here's a three-point plan that can actually bring about independence
Seamus goes on to inform us that he has an office and a small team to handle the casework, diary commitments and tasks that every MP must deliver for their constituents. No news there then. In addition he has a constituency office. I think all MPs probably have one. I am glad to learn he has excellent staff to support him.
Finally, thankfully, at last, Seamus gets to the meat of the article and admits 'our primary political task is to bring an end to our involvement here when we secure the independence of Scotland and take our place among the nations of the world. It's something to remind myself every day as an antidote to the imperialist atmosphere within which we work.'
I was, however, left waiting to learn what actual practical steps he is taking to help achieve this aim.
READ MORE: Consultation launched on Jeremy Corbyn's new party
Seamus claims that he spends most of his time 'speaking in the House of Commons chamber or [[Westminster]] Hall, attending lobbying meetings or the many daily information sessions on a dizzying array of topics; meeting business representatives or charities who want me to represent their interests; going on fact-finding visits or joining protest meetings to show support or joining with other MPs in organised all-party groups on topics important to my constituents'. This in itself is laudable, but no less than I would expect from any of the other 634 MPs.
Seamus ends by saying: 'My hope is that the rest of my time in parliament will be as productive and as enjoyable as the year just past and that my team and I can contribute to bringing about the advent of our independence.'
READ MORE: State pension age rises target the north of the UK disproportionately
Sadly I have not voted SNP for more than 50 years for our – now much reduced – group of MPs to enjoy themselves in [[Westminster]], and frankly I am at a complete loss to see how their recent contributions can help to bring about our independence. They seem to have learned nothing from the results of the July 2024 General Election, which saw almost the entire [[SNP]] group sent homeward to think again. They had settled down instead of trying to settle up, and the electorate said – what's the point?
I think I now need to take one of those damn tablets.
Anne Laird
Inverness
MUCH as though I loathe what is happening in Gaza and echo the sentiment of the Daily Express exhortation to end the obscenity, I cannot accept the subheading 'It shames us all'. It does not shame me and all others of a like mind. It shames Starmer and his cabal of politically immoral sluts. It also shames those in the RAF who sanction the flights from Cyprus.
David Lammy says information is not shared with the IDF so why then have more than 500 flights so far been launched? Surely it is now time for all MPs to fully state all parties with whom they associate under pain of extremely large fines and automatic prison sentence for any and all omissions.
NEVER IN MY NAME.
M Ross
Aviemore
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The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
It's easy to sneer at Corbyn after farcical launch of his new party but here's why Starmer should be very, very afraid
IT is easy to sneer at Jeremy Corbyn and his new political party. As Labour leader Corbyn took his former comrades to their biggest defeat since 1935, winning just 203 seats. 2 2 As leader of a fringe party he will have zero chance of becoming Prime Minister. We can all be thankful for that. The launch of the party was itself farcical, with Corbyn already apparently falling out with his co-founder, former Labour MP Zarah Sultana. It appears to be called 'Your Party', and even has a website by that name, yet within hours of the launch Sultana tweeted in protest 'it's not called that!' and insisted that a name will be chosen at the putative party's first conference. When challenged on the row, Corbyn announced that Sultana was 'in Coventry' (where her constituency is), failing to spot the euphemism. All very Corbyn-like. If I were Keir Starmer, however, I would be taking the launch of the new party very seriously indeed. While Your Party, or whatever it is called, has no chance of forming a government, it has every chance of contributing to the downfall of the current one. Just look how Reform UK ate into the Conservative Party vote in last year's General Election, helping reduce it to a rump of just 120 seats. Corbyn has every chance of inflicting as much damage on Labour as Reform UK did on the Tories. Add to Labour's misery Corbyn and Sultana haven't announced much in the way of policy yet — you wouldn't expect them to have done — but their declaration on Thursday included two positions which absolutely hit the right buttons for Labour's increasingly disenchanted band of supporters on the Left. First, they want to end arms sales to Israel, and second, they propose to take all utility companies into public ownership. Inside UK's 1st Reform pub with £2 pints, boozers drinking 'Remainer tears' & even Corbyn's allowed in, on one condition As for the first, just look how Labour suffered at the hands of independent pro-Palestinian candidates in the last election, with Jonathan Ashworth losing his supposedly safe seat in Leicester and Wes Streeting, now Health Secretary, scraping home by just 528 votes in Ilford North. Shabana Mahmood, now Justice Secretary, saw her 28,000 majority shrink to just 3,421 in the face of a challenge from a pro-Palestine candidate — and that was against the backdrop of a national Labour landslide. A nationally organised General Election campaign which focuses on Gaza — even one organised by Corbyn — can surely only add to Labour's misery on this front. Whatever the rest of us might think of Hamas, and worry that a Palestinian state — if created now — would simply become a terrorist state, this is a touchstone issue on the Left and has the potential to cost the party a substantial number of seats. As for nationalising public utilities, that would be hugely popular among voters — and not just Labour ones. According to a recent YouGov poll, the public favours public ownership of energy companies by a margin of 71 per cent to 17 per cent and of water companies by 82 to eight per cent. Where Corbyn would find the money to renationalise utility companies is, of course, another matter, but my guess is that many voters will not be bothered by that little problem. At the next election, Starmer will in one sense be in an even worse position than Rishi Sunak was in last year. Starmer will have two upstart parties chipping away at his vote. While Corbyn's party will be attracting votes on the Left, Reform UK has already started eating into the traditional working class Labour vote as Nigel Farage adopts an agenda that is more economically left-wing. To add to this, Labour holds a very large number of seats on small majorities. It won a landslide only because its unimpressive 34 per cent share of the vote was very efficiently spread. It won't take much for Labour's majority to evaporate. Not for the first time, you have to wonder at Starmer's political naivety in chucking Corbyn out of the Labour Party. It may have seemed a good wheeze at the time, five years ago, to make a statement that Labour really had changed. There was also a good reason for it in Corbyn's claim that accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party had been 'massively overstated for political reasons'. But Corbyn had been saying ridiculous things for decades and had never been thrown out by Labour. Vanished without trace Tony Blair correctly worked out that Corbyn had a huge following on the Left and it was best to tolerate his presence. Starmer seems to have a poor political brain by comparison. Mastering a political start-up is notoriously difficult in Britain's first-past-the-post election system. Who now remembers ChangeUK, the anti- Brexit party which was launched with eight MPs who had defected from their parties but which quickly vanished without trace? Even Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams' SDP only lasted eight years in spite of some impressive early by-election wins. But Starmer should remember how the SDP nevertheless helped keep Labour a long way from power during the 1980s. His fate may just have been sealed.
Daily Record
3 hours ago
- Daily Record
Donald Trump arrives in Scotland as President greeted at Prestwick Airport
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Telegraph
4 hours ago
- Telegraph
Corbyn party should nationalise all banks, says board member
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