A Labour vote in Scotland is a vote not to matter

You’ve got to hand it to the Labour party, they are certainly consistent, consistent in their shafting of Scottish workers. It’s almost as though, despite Labour’s protestations to the contrary, Scottish votes don’t matter to the Labour party and its strategists. We’ve seen a party which campaigned on the slogan vote Labour to save Grangemouth preside over the closure of the Grangemouth refinery. Anas Sarwar sleekitly claimed that the Government couldn’t intervene to prevent the closure of the refinery because it’s owned by a private company. Being owned by a private company did not prevent Labour from calling an emergency sitting of the Commons on a Saturday in order to prevent its Chinese owners closing down the steel mill in Scunthorpe where Labour is desperately trying to shore up its vote and fend off Reform UK.

Then we saw the shafting of the Scottish fishing industry. Despite the facts that 60% of the UK’s fishing grounds are in Scottish waters and that the Scottish fleet landed over 60% of the total value and 70% of the tonnage of all UK landings, the Labour government has decided to allocate just 7.78% of the £360 million Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund to Scotland. Scotland will receive only £28 million, Wales will receive £18 million, Northern Ireland £10 million while the remaining £304 million will be allocated to England. Scotland lands more fish than the whole of England, Wales and Northern Ireland combined. Under EU funding, which the UK Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund is intended to replace, Scotland got 46% of the fisheries funding made available to the UK.

How is that Brexit benefit working out for the Scottish fishing industry now? Scotland’s Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gouegoun, no one in the Scottish Government, nor the Scottish fishing industry were consulted over the decision to allocate funding on the basis of population share within the UK and not according to the relative size of the fishing industry in Scotland. The decision was announced just a few hours after the Scottish Government had been informed of it, giving the Scottish Government no time to draft a considered response. Remember how Anas Sarwar insisted that the Labour party in Scotland would be at the heart of government? Spoiler alert, he lied.

Yet again the Labour government has taken a decision to prioritise an industry in England at the expense of Scotland. It is no coincidence that the English fishing fleet is predominantly based in the east and south west of England, regions where Labour is desperately trying to shore up its vote against Reform.

Then there’s the travesty of GB Energy, which Labour touted as the solution to a just transition to renewable energy for workers in the Scottish oil and gas sector. Labour promised that GB Energy would be headquartered in Aberdeen and that it would create 1000 new jobs. Labour’s promises began to unravel even before the Westminster general election in July 2024. The new energy company was not going to be an energy company in any normal sense of the term, it would not produce or sell energy and would not own any energy producing infrastructure. GB Energy was to be an ‘investment vehicle’ funnelling public funds into private renewable energy projects, projects which we have since learned would include new nuclear plants. The jobs allegedly due to be created would overwhelmingly be low level office administrative jobs, hardly suitable replacements for highly skilled tradespeople.

Now we have learned that a mere 15 jobs have been created by GB Energy, its chief executive will not after all be based in the company’s offices in Aberdeen, so it’s a headquarters without a head. And then we learned that the promised 1000 new jobs won’t materialise for 20 years, if they are ever created at all. Labour’s pledge to cut £300 from energy bills has evaporated and the boss of GB Energy refuses to commit to it.

And now we have the refusal of the Labour government to step in to save the Mossmorran plastics plant in Fife. Speaking in the House of Commons on Tuesday evening, Business Minister Chris McDonald said there was no realistic business plan to go with investment.Hundreds of staff have been told their jobs are at risk as the petrochemical company prepares to close part of the site. Closure is due in February.

The plant’s owners Exxon Mobil have said 179 directly employed jobs will be at risk, along with 250 contractors. The American based owners have blamed the UK Government for the closure. As usual, it’s the Scottish Government which will have to pick up the pieces.

If this sort of thing was a one off incident we could chalk it down to misfortune, but as we see, time and time again, the interests and jobs of Scottish workers get sacrificed on the altar of British Government priorities. This is what happens when your country has just 57 out of 650 MPs, 8.77% of the total. The influence of Scottish MPs can only make a difference when opinion in the Commons is almost evenly divided, a circumstance which the first past the post system is designed to mitigate against.

The recent decision to give the Scottish fishing industry less than 8% of the million Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund while giving the great majority of it to the much smaller English fishing industry is one of the most blatant examples of Scotland’s needs being sacrificed for English interests. The truth is that as a part of the UK, whenever there is a conflict between England’s needs and Scotland’s needs, it’s Scotland which will lose out, and the British Government will not step in to protect Scottish jobs because it has no electoral incentive to do so as the workers at Grangemouth and Mossmorran have learned the hard way.

One of the best arguments for independence is that representatives elected by the people of Scotland will make up 100% of the Parliament of the independent Scottish state and they will not prioritise jobs in another country over jobs in Scotland. The brutal reality is that if you vote Labour, or for one of the anti-independence parties in Scotland, you are voting not to matter.

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