{"id":17064,"date":"2025-07-04T15:21:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T15:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=17064"},"modified":"2025-10-07T13:52:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T13:52:18","slug":"starmer-y1-what-now-for-scotland-and-a-fractured-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2025\/07\/starmer-y1-what-now-for-scotland-and-a-fractured-union\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer Y1: what now for Scotland and a fractured union?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As the mostly scathing assessments of Keir Starmer\u2019s first year of government roll in, the UK\u2019s Labour government looks wobbly and lacking direction. After his disastrous, deeply inept week on disability benefits reform, perhaps the most common question remains, what does Starmer actually believe in?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starmer, in remarkably Soviet style, seems above all to believe \u2013 in some rather vague way \u2013 in the workers which may partly explain his gung ho lack of concern about pensioners\u2019 winter fuel payments and disability benefits. Pushed by the BBC\u2019s Nick Robinson on the question of what\u2019s the strategy, or at least the story, Starmer replied<\/a>: \u201cIt’s about a passion, if that’s the right word…but certainly a determination to change the lives of millions of working people and, in particular, to tackle this question of fairness.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on: \u201cIt’s almost like a social contract, that people are getting back what they’re putting in, that there is a fairer environment for them that supports them and respects them.\u201d<\/p>\n

With his focus on \u2018the worker\u2019, not every citizen in work or out of work, young or old, Starmer betrays not only his inability to talk to the wider public as a whole (his call for national renewal a year ago missing in action), but also perhaps his focus on competing with Reform in English and Welsh constituencies (and voicing the right wing \u2018blue Labour\u2019 ideas that appear to influence him).<\/p>\n

Fairness is a great idea but a slippery one. Starmer appears unable to spell out substantially or strategically what he is genuinely for \u2013 a prime minister without a mission.<\/em><\/p>\n

Starmer’s stasis<\/h2>\n

Starmer\u2019s government is now in a mess with several reports talking of infighting in Downing Street and general fury at the so-called \u2018rebel\u2019 MPs on the vicious disability poilicy reform (rebels who are now to be blamed when the government also fails to end the Dickensian two child benefit cap). This doesn\u2019t betoken a rapid, positive rethink.<\/p>\n

And Starmer has proved incoherent or worse in taking responsibility for the furore (including his belated defence of Rachel Reeves). His\u00a0suggestion<\/a>\u00a0that he was too busy at the NATO summit to focus properly on the rebels\u2019 demands was a particularly disastrous statement \u2013 prime ministers are meant to be able to keep abreast of domestic and international politics at the same time.<\/p>\n

And Starmer\u2019s refusal to face up to the genocide in Gaza will perhaps remain, long after all the other issues, his biggest political and moral failure \u2013 however much he apparently enjoys the international meet-ups.<\/p>\n

The government did hope the media would focus on the big NHS reform plans announced this week, though at first glance a digital app and community centres intended to lead to fewer staff in ten years\u2019 time sounds more worrying than welcome. But these are plans for England, not Scotland or Wales.<\/p>\n

And you wouldn\u2019t know it from the reviews of Starmer\u2019s first year, which are mainly England-focused (even if the authors think they\u2019re writing about the UK), but there are elections in under a year for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments both of which Labour currently looks set to lose.<\/p>\n

Where now for Scotland?<\/h2>\n

In Scotland, Labour won 37 seats last year, leaving the SNP with just 9. These 37 MPs have been rather invisible in the last year (and less than a third seem to have been part of the large rebel group on the disability benefits bill). Labour would get many fewer MPs in Scotland if an election were held today.<\/p>\n

An in-depth\u00a0poll<\/a>\u00a0this week from Ipsos\/STV now puts the SNP on 31%, in a general election vote, to Labour\u2019s 22% \u2013 with Reform in third place at 16% (about half the level of UK wide polls but, like England, with men almost twice as likely to support Reform as women).<\/p>\n

For the Holyrood election, with its mix of constituency and list votes, the SNP leads too \u2013 34% on the constituency vote to 23% for Labour, and a smaller 4 percentage point gap between them for the list vote (Reform coming third on each).<\/p>\n

The Scottish Government looks, at best, tired after 18 years in power and after the particularly difficult two years since Nicola Sturgeon resigned. But John Swinney\u2019s low key, no dynamism approach, is serving the SNP better in the polls than might have happened if Labour at Westminster had been more strategic and more \u2018Labour\u2019 \u2013 rather than the mix of U-turns, talk about their bad inheritance (even Starmer admitted recently it had squeezed out hope), a focus on deregulation and the supplying of arms to Israel.<\/p>\n

Independence and the EU?<\/h2>\n

The Scottish government has been remarkably quiet about independence under John Swinney. But that will not hold as the Holyrood election approaches \u2013 something will have to be said and written in the manifesto.<\/p>\n

Here the IPSOs\/STV poll makes interesting reading for Starmer and Anas Sarwar, as much as for Swinney. The headline figure of 52% yes to 48% no on independence rather obscures the much higher figures for those from age 16-54 years old. This, broadly speaking, is the working generation \u2013 Starmer should, surely, be paying attention with his intense focus on \u2018the worker\u2019.<\/p>\n

For 16-34 year olds, 72% support independence and, for 35-54 year olds, 57% support independence. These figures are quite remarkable (even though not new in terms of the older demographic having long been the most unionist). Scotland is remaining part of the UK principally through the support of its older generation.<\/p>\n

Labour will point to the fact that independence is not a priority for voters now. True, in the IPSOS poll, independence comes seventeenth in a list of priorities \u2013 the NHS first. But for 16-34 year olds, independence comes in tenth (with 33% seeing it as a priority) and the EU comes just above that at 34%. Younger voters also rank climate change as a much higher priority (in sixth place, at 37%, compared to fifteenth for those polled overall). And young people are not worried about tackling migration, according to this data set \u2013 with only 12% putting it as a priority (to 28% for the overall poll).<\/p>\n

Younger voters are most concerned about inflation, then the NHS, poverty, the economy and housing. Only 11% of 16-34 year olds would vote Reform, compared to 22% of 55 year olds and older.<\/p>\n

Scotland\u2019s younger generation looks rather strong and progressive on these figures. Remarkably, they also have somewhat lower lack of faith in politics (at 34%) as a priority issue (to 41% for the polling sample as a whole). There are some reasons for optimism in much of this data.<\/p>\n

Holyrood elections<\/h2>\n

Scotland\u2019s Holyrood election will be fought on both devolved issues and, inevitably too, the bigger picture of the UK government\u2019s performance overall. In the IPSOS poll, the SNP comes out ahead of Labour on trust to manage the NHS, economy and education \u2013 albeit the SNP only hits 24%.<\/p>\n

Scottish voters are not much impressed with their politicians any more than in England. All the party leaders \u2013 in Scotland and for the UK \u2013 come in with negative net satisfaction figures (in the IPSOS) poll, but Kemi Badenoch, Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage have much larger negative figures than the various Scottish leaders (with Tory leader Russell Findlay on minus 28% almost matching Farage\u2019s minus 30%, and Badenoch on minus 42% just ahead of Starmer on minus 41%. Swinney on minus 17% and Sarwar on minus 18% are more or less level pegging).<\/p>\n

At some point, Keir Starmer\u2019s attention will presumably swing to Scotland at least a little. But after his unnecessarily difficult first year, for which he indeed does have to take responsibility, the UK government is, for now, likely to carry on focusing on England. There have been suggestions that, looking forward, Starmer\u2019s government will try to talk to English voters currently defecting to the Greens and LibDems and not only to north of England Reform voters. Whether this will transpire \u2013 and can be managed in any serious, successful or strategic way \u2013 looks at the very best like an open question. And whether it will impact on Scotland in a positive way for Labour, for now, looks highly unlikely.<\/p>\n

It’s a long way until next May for both UK and Scottish politics \u2013 and on the global stage \u2013 but at the moment, the SNP is set to come first in the Holyrood elections (though what sort of minority government might emerge is currently unclear).<\/p>\n

Labour\u2019s hopes, when it won the general election, to be in government in England, Wales and Scotland by 2026 currently look off the agenda, not to say absurd. A fractured Labour government and parliamentary party is not well positioned to think about the fractured union that it claims to govern. And a UK government focused on England looks set to continue doing so.<\/p>\n

First published on the author’s Europe & Scotland newsletter<\/a> on Substack<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Labour\u2019s hopes, when it won the general election, to be in government in England, Wales and Scotland by 2026 currently look off the agenda, not to say absurd. A fractured Labour government and parliamentary party is not well positioned to think about the fractured union that it claims to govern. And a UK government focused on England looks set to continue doing so.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[710,36],"class_list":["post-17064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-labour-party","tag-scottish-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17320,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17064\/revisions\/17320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}