SNP Is Not As Left As It Seems

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APR
2015

Thursday 30^TH

posted by Morning Star in Editorial

Over the last two years the SNP's  rhetoric has shifted sharply left to win Labour heartlands, often in areas where Labour councils have, without protest, imposed the cuts handed on by the SNP government in Holyrood.

But there is also a contradiction.

Labour's policies today are to the left of the SNP's.

In terms of spending the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found the SNP programme require more cuts than Labour's.

Some of the SNP's signature left policies - such as restoring the 50 per cent tax rate on incomes above £150,000 and supporting all-women shortlists - are policies Labour has been signed up to for years. 

Labour is ahead of the SNP in terms of redistribution - lacking the nationalists' obsession with corporation tax cuts - and on commitments on workers' rights and the living wage.

Even on public-sector ownership, Labour's step in calling for a public-sector operator for rail transport is preferable to the SNP's eagerness to hand Scottish franchises to private monopolies.

The SNP  and other pro-independence forces to its left have actually concentrated their fire on left wing Labour MPs such as Katy Clark, Ian Davidson, Jim Sheridan - friends of our paper, our movement and our class.

The SNP has never claimed to be a class party. It is national in its aspirations. It happily deals with big business and the super-rich, from Brian Souter to Rupert Murdoch.

If it eliminates Labour north of the border it will only increase the likelihood of a Conservative government after next week.

This might well boost support for Scottish Independence. It would also spell disaster for working people in Scotland as well as England and Wales.