Over the last few weeks the SNP has been ramping up their campaigning efforts ahead of the next General Election – not for themselves, but for the Tories. They will continue to attack Labour, because they want the Tories to win again.
Barely a day goes by without the SNP telling Scots that somehow it doesn't matter if the Tories win again - and I think it insults the intelligence of people across the country.
During English local elections, when Labour were booting the Tories out of councils, what was the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn doing?
He was shilling for oil and gas giants and complaining about our plans for a windfall tax on their obscene profits.
Just last week SNP MP Kirsty Blackman let slip the party’s approach to the next General Election by admitting that the SNP would bring down a Labour government and let the Tories in if we don’t agree to their demands.
The SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster Mhairi Black put it most bluntly of all, claiming “it does not matter whether we have a Labour or a Tory government”.
Just last week, Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted that the Tories are trying to gerrymander elections.
Every week, Suella Braverman ramps up the anti-migrant rhetoric as she pursues her atrocious plan for planes to Rwanda. And every day the Tories sink our economy while lining the pockets of their billionaire pals.
Despite all this and more, the SNP say it doesn’t matter if the Tories win again!
It may not matter to them, but it matters to the people of Scotland, who are dealing with soaring living costs and falling wages.
It matters to the businesses going to the wall because of the Tories’ disastrous economic record.
It matters to workers robbed of their right to strike because of draconian Tory anti-Trade Union laws.
It matters to the future of our planet that we have a government up to the challenge of tackling the climate emergency.
The Tories have been disastrous for Scotland and for the whole of the UK. They partied through lockdown and rode roughshod over the rules the rest of us followed.
They let sleaze and scandal run rampant in their party and in their government.
They crashed the economy and left everyone else paying the price.
But the SNP don’t care about any of that – they only care about their own narrow self interest and their constitutional obsession.
The status quo works for them and that’s why they are fighting to protect it.
The Tories’ constitutional and economic vandalism provides cover for their own incompetence. Their divisive agendas feed one another. They are two sides of the same coin and they are both failing Scotland.
Labour are the only party that are standing for change at the next election and only Labour can deliver that change our country needs.
We will fight for a real windfall tax and take action to tackle the cost of living crisis.
We will get our economy back on track and secure the highest sustained growth in the G7.
We will scrap the Tories’ shameful anti-strike laws and deliver a New Deal for workers across the UK, strengthening workers’ rights, ending zero hour contracts and bogus self-employment, and banning fire and rehire.
We will tackle the climate emergency, create the jobs of the future and unleash Scotland’s potential as a world-leader in renewables with our transformative £28 billion a year Green Prosperity Plan.
This is the difference between a Labour and Tory government. It might not matter to the SNP but it will matter to Scotland.
One thing is clear though – if you want a Labour government, the only way to get one is by voting for one.
Shame of ministers' fatal flaws
Next month it will be three years since the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry was announced after the tragic death of Milly Main.
Two children died, as did a Scottish Government employee, Andrew Slorance.
Yesterday the Sunday Mail provided yet more proof of perhaps the most damning part of the scandals - SNP ministers knew the hospital had a fatal flaw that would put lives at risk and they opened it anyway.
Now the leadership of the board who have run the hospital have launched a fresh attack on whistleblowers and families.
Kimberly Darroch – whose daughter Milly Main died – says that hospital bosses are making the families’ lives ‘hell’.
Six years into this scandal and the established facts are ignored by a health board, and ministers are too weak to stand up for the victims.
It’s what the victims family have come to expect from this SNP Government: no one ever taking responsibility.
The Health Secretary when the hospital opened and when Milly Main died, Shona Robinson, is now the Deputy First Minister.
And the Health Secretary who took the failing Board out of special measures, Humza Yousaf now the First Minister.
If this failing government can’t find the strength to send up for grieving families, how can they pretend they’ll stand up for Scotland.
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