Who are Labour and the SNP really governing for?

WHAT DO YOU DO about a government that governs not in the clear interests of its own people but to the benefit of others beyond our borders, whom it has no responsibility for and who did not elect it? That’s how Labour governs the UK.

What do you do about a government that tells you it has no money and so must raise your taxes even higher to avoid borrowing more, only for it to spend huge sums on people from other countries and then not only raise taxes to record levels but borrow more too? That’s how Labour governs the UK.

What do you do about a “government” that presides over a collapse in education standards – notably literacy and numeracy – while attacks by pupils on teachers soar and teaching posts are regularly cut by local authorities denied the cash to pay them? That’s how the SNP governs Scotland.

What do you do about a “government” that, despite all its bluster and boasting about its commitment to the NHS and how Scotland does better than England – refuses to pass on the increased funding it is given by Westminster governments, that presides over a decline in Scottish healthy life expectancy and is failing to return the SNHS to pre-pandemic levels – unlike England and Wales? That’s how the SNP governs Scotland.

Why am I asking these questions?

In the UK, Labour has now been in power for twenty-one months. It should be able to stay in power for over three more years – until August 2029 – and yet it is already behaving as if it has reached the end of its days. It swings from one crisis to another. Its attempts to deal with problems result in yet more U-turns (now at least sixteen), requiring more forced and insincere apologies.

Labour perseveres with unpopular policies like Whac-A-Mole

Investigations into the policy disasters – such as the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US – only manage to reveal more scandalous behaviour by a prime minister who has no political self-awareness and shows the poor judgement of a football manager facing relegation and sacking. This rinse and repeat erosion of credibility only provokes lengthier media coverage and deepens the pain.

And yet Labour perseveres with unpopular policies like Whac-A-Mole, battered down by public outrage only to pop up again and again. Think of the abolition of jury trials in England, think of digital ID under different guises and excuses, think of taxes raised, frozen, then raised again.

In Scotland we are witnessing budgets cuts to education, threats to teachers’ jobs, and a failure to recognise that what children are taught is not fit for purpose because it does not require reading the classical canon that British authors have gifted to the world – or learning about the bad but never the good that British people gave the world (see addendum below). Critical race theory and decolonising the curriculum are typical aspects of the changes to what is taught, while students do even need to read a novel to pass the national Higher certificate.

Health spending has grown faster in England; while in 2010/11 Scotland spent 11 per cent more than in England – by 2024/25 the SNP had reduced that advantage to just 2 per cent. Hospital activity in Scotland still remains below pre-pandemic levels seen in 2019, despite a 14 per cent increase in staffing and higher funding – but that’s not the case in either England or Wales where activity has recovered faster.

One minute Labour’s Rachel Reeves or the SNP’s Shona Robison are telling us we will all have to tighten our belts to justify the higher taxes they have introduced and pay more taxes because the public finances are so precarious, and then the next minute they are giving away millions or billions they proclaim not to have on their own favourite priorities.

Starmer’s Labour Government has committed to handing over £34.7bn to Mauritius for it to take the Chagos Islands off our hands, against the wishes of the Chagos islanders who were forced to resettle in the UK during the 1960s. The Iran war has now thrown that deal into chaos as Mauritius stated it would not have given permission for US jets to operate bombing missions from their base – and Starmer first said no and then performed another U-turn.

On a similar theme, Starmer’s prized EU-UK reset has already given the EU rights to access the UK’s fishing grounds (the majority in Scotland) until 2038 (valued at £6bn) in return for nothing other than being able to start talks where more costly concessions will be made. And they will be made at a high price, as the bills keep coming in.

The latest concession is the announcement that Labour is closing down the UK Government’s Turing student support scheme that, for £83m last year, provided financial backing for 43,000 British students to study in 162 countries around the whole world. It was an example of Global Britain made real. It replaced the EU’s Erasmus+ scheme, which cost significantly more, helped fewer UK students and limited help to only those attending universities in 33 European countries.

Yet the Turing scheme is undeniably superior to Erasmus+ – it funds more British students because it does not carry the cost of funding EU students coming to the UK – that responsibility is for overseas governments to meet. It is also focused on helping financially disadvantaged students; of the 35,248 British students Turing supported in 2025/26, 61 per cent (21,411) were disadvantaged participants.

On the sidelines the SNP cheers on all of this cosying-up to the EU and would go the whole way of rejoining and paying at least £30-£40bn annually to do so. Yet we see with the announcement of the draft veterinary food deals that ALL British companies will have to adopt EU laws whether or not they trade with EU countries or even export.

So, going back to my questions, what do you do when politicians spend money they don’t have, on people and other countries they are not responsible for, limiting the futures of our own people – and then tax and borrow more in order to betray their own kin?

You vote against them, repeatedly and regularly so they are no longer in office, no longer setting the laws and making the spending priorities.

That requires having an alternative and thankfully Reform has emerged over the last two years to provide hope that change is possible. Soon we shall learn of the Reform Party’s manifesto for the Holyrood elections.

Frankly it will only be a start for the last twenty-six years of devolution have broken Scotland so badly that it will take at least eight years to repair the damage. So we shall require patience, perseverance and guile to achieve change – but at last there is hope that one party is prepared to win power and halt the decline rather than just shout from the sidelines without the policies to match.

Addendum: Yes, Britain once participated in the slave trade like any other country from the time of the ancients, but it was Britain that committed to the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and formed the Royal Navy’s West African Squadron to hunt down slave ships run by other countries. Some 1,587 sailors gave their lives ending the trade against much international opposition and did not concern themselves with international law in doing so. The Royal Navy seized approximately 1,600 ships involved in the slave trade and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard these vessels.