ANDY BURNHAM’S victory at the Makerfield by-election has presented itself as a unique opportunity to inspire hope in the Labour Party and British politics once again. But if this victory is truly to represent the turning point that many hope it can be, Burnham must be prepared to make bold and meaningful decisions that create a vision and tell the story of the hopes and aspirations of a UK Labour government and what it can achieve. A fundamental shift in the party is the only hope of improving its chances of regaining favour with the British electorate.
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While there is hope that Burnham can bring about the change the party desperately needs, many uncertainties and unanswered questions remain around what a potential Burnham UK Labour government would look like and, more crucially, who will play a key part in delivering his vision for the country.
The appointment of his Cabinet, chief of staff and close circle of political advisers is the first consequential decision Burnham will make at the start of his premiership as prime minister.  
Recent media reporting would suggest that Burnham is happy to refill the Cabinet with old faces to pacify the right of the party. Whispers of characters like Shabana Mahmood and Josh Simons making an appearance in a Burnham government do nothing to reassure the left of Burnham’s supposed progressive agenda, while the appointment of James Purnell as his chief of staff is deeply concerning.
These appointments will be pivotal in reshaping the political agenda and determining the overall vision of a Burnham government. The left has outlined its terms and hopes for a Burnham government that taxes wealth, facilitates public ownership, furthers workers’ rights and ethical foreign policy that condemns the actions of Israel.
If Burnham truly wishes to detach himself from Starmer’s record and offer a different politics than before, the left’s agenda creates a blueprint to achieve this. Nationalisation, wealth taxes and a shake-up of the current fiscal landscape are, in my view, the only hope Labour has in rebuilding support and reconnecting with the electorate.
Resetting the political landscape at a Scottish level will involve repairing leadership and institutional relationships between Westminster and devolved nations. Burnham has expressed enthusiasm for a shakeup of devolution and has previously made clear his desire to shift power away from Westminster and the UK’s framework of financial centralisation. Good working relations with devolved governments will be imperative to this agenda, and any decisions made need to ensure that the Scottish electorate are brought with us.
Burnham will know more than most that our electoral challenges do not stop at the border. Scottish Labour recorded its worst-ever performance in May, and Burnham’s agenda will be critical to our party’s future. Our defeat in May was made inevitable not only because of Starmer’s unpopularity on the doors, but also because of our lack of a clear message to Scottish voters for what a Scottish Labour government would stand for and how we would make their lives better.
Scotland needs a refreshed alternative on the left that the SNP and Greens have failed to offer, but so far, Scottish Labour has failed to do so. Burnham’s election as an MP and prime minister could be the catalyst for change.
A lot can happen in two-and-a-half years, and the chance of Burnham as party leader offers a fortunate and unique opportunity to reset the government’s agenda, turn things around, and instil a sense of hope in voters that has been missing in recent years.
Burnham’s by-election victory was arguably the most consequential British by-election in modern politics, and as we have seen, it represents far more than a constituency win. It represents a successful fight against right-wing populists, who only six weeks prior had won all eight council wards in the Makerfield constituency in the Wigan Council election. It represents a stance against the current status quo and political agenda. It represents hope and the possibility that Labour can win once again.  
The past two years have shown us that the plan for change is not working, and that the government’s agenda and tactics of appeasing to Reform fails to fundamentally tackle the core issues at stake.
The monumental swing of Labour votes and subsequent decrease of Reform votes in the Makerfield by-election demonstrates how Reform can be beaten with the right strategy and integrity. Burnham demonstrated how a campaign run on hope and aspiration can be far more impactful than a campaign which seeks to isolate and divide.
For now, it appears the Burnham has begun to tell his story of a progressive, leftist government that prioritises ambition, hope and tolerance. Let’s hope that his vision and government agenda are backed by socialist policies which only work to serve working people, communities and collective society.
Carol Mochan is Scottish Labour MSP for South Scotland Region. This article first appeared in the Morning Star on 30th June. ​

​We are now in a position where the leadership of the Scottish Labour Party, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats, think that we need to, at the very least, deepen our relationship with the EU and increase spending on defence. It is critical that the Scottish left takes these arguments on. Posed as a remedy to our economic ills and a means to keep us safe, they are neither. In fact they may well accelerate economic decline and help sustain illusions of post imperial glory.
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Defence
According to the House of Commons library, the 2025 Spending Review puts defence spending at £62.2 billion in 2025/26, increasing to £73.5 billion in 2028/29. This is equivalent to an annual average real-terms growth rate of 3.8% over this period.[i] To give that some perspective, the combined Scottish Parliament budget for Health and Social Care, Finance and Local Government, Social Justice, Education and Skills, Justice and Home Affairs and Transport is £63 billion.
The big party consensus in favour of increased defence expenditure includes Andy Burnham, potentially the next leader of the Labour Party. Although, he has at least suggested that defence spending could be excluded from the fiscal rules allowing ministers to increase military spending by borrowing more, without cutting welfare.
Why the rush to increase defence spending? We are offered two broad reasons.  Firstly, we are told that there is an increased threat level, primarily from Russia and secondly that spending on defence will help spark the growth we desperately need to shake the UK and Scottish economies out of the economic torpor that has increasingly taken a grip, most recently since the 2007 financial crisis, although economic decline is the long-term trajectory of the British economy.
In addition, there has been a crescendo of criticism of the decision to leave the EU in 2016 and increasing pressure to “get closer” to or even to rejoin it.[ii]
What has not been considered, is what such a move would mean for addressing a socialist solution for our current economic mess.
What is the threat?
Let’s start by looking at defence spending. The identified threat is from Russia, which is accused of starting a war against Ukraine entirely unprovoked as part of a Russian imperialist plan to dominate Eastern Europe.  
What, of course, NATO members, including Britain, do not dwell on is that they knew the eastward expansion of NATO would provoke Russia. In April this year Declassified UK published this: “The British files for 1995-99, available at the National Archives in London, show that Russia repeatedly warned the West about eastern European countries, including Ukraine, joining Nato.”[iii]
The report goes on to discuss the period after the election of Tony Blair: “One reason for Moscow’s opposition to enlargement at this time was Blair’s war in Kosovo in 1999, which involved bombing Serbia Moscow’s ally, and expanding Western influence in eastern Europe after failing to secure UN security council authorisation…However, it wasn’t just Kosovo, but US/UK policies towards Iraq, and their bombing of the country in 1998, also without UN authorisation, that angered Russia.”
NATO’s leaders also conveniently forget the 2014 Maidan coup against the Russian leaning president of Ukraine, Yanukovitch, which provoked the revolt in the Donbass and the beginning of armed conflict, with Russia initially acting covertly until the full-blown invasion of 2022.  While none of NATO’s aggression justifies the illegal Russian invasion of the whole of Ukraine, it undermines the story endlessly peddled by NATO, at least until Trump, that Russia is inherently malign and will only ever act in ways hostile to its European neighbours.
If Britain and the other NATO members were serious about reducing the threat from Russia, they would support a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia including a new defence architecture for Europe that would offer Russia the guarantees of non-aggression and economic inclusion that it clearly seeks. (See War in Ukraine by Benjamin and Davies, OR publications).
Defence and economic growth
And as for the Defence sector providing the basis of economic growth, the CND’s Alternative Defence Review[iv] demolishes this argument pointing out: that military spending has one of the lowest ‘employment multipliers’ - the capacity to create jobs - of all economic categories; that defence employment is highly concentrated in specific regions as opposed to evenly spread across the UK.  31.1 percent is in the north-west of England, for example; that it is highly concentrated in a relatively small number of large firms with small and medium enterprises securing only 5 percent of orders; that because many of the defence industry’s employees are bound by regulations that require secrecy, innovation through knowledge sharing is near to impossible.
Losing control of our economy
The other solution being urged by SNP, Liberal and Labour leaders or wannabe leaders to our economic crisis, is a return to the warm embrace of the EU, either after a prolonged courtship – the Burnham solution or a faster, shotgun wedding - Wes Streeting’s preferred option.  
Would our profound economic malaise be cured by a return to the EU, an organisation which was and is, incidentally, umbilically linked to the NATO alliance. Trump has questioned whether the US is getting value for money, further fuelling the fire for increased defence expenditure among EU states, but a more profound rift seems to have been avoided. Aside from its toxic relationship with NATO, economically, rejoining the EU is more likely to be a cure that is worse than the disease.
One of the main causes of our economic sclerosis has been understood on the Left for some time.  Fifty-one years ago, the 1975 Red Paper on Scotland edited by Gordon Brown argued that Scotland’s economy was  
“…one akin to that of a colony, i.e. one with a high level of external control, absentee decision makers and subsidiary technology.’”
Since then, it has got worse. After decades of de-industrialisation, following the victory of Thatcherism we had the 2007 economic crisis. This was “resolved” in the major capitalist countries by state intervention to bail out the banks that had caused the crisis, leading to a massive expansion of public debt and then in 2010 the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition imposed austerity in order to deal with that debt while blaming “unaffordable” public expenditure under the previous Labour government.
Meanwhile multinationals, mainly from the United States, Europe and Japan expanded their control of global production chains while domestic productive capacity our ability to make things - in core capitalist countries - like Britain and Scotland, declined. In Keep left the Red Paper 2025, Richard Leonard points out as a consequence, that control of our economy by foreign owners has increased and that the creation of the Scottish parliament has had no significant impact on stopping this process.  
Indeed, under the SNP, attracting foreign direct investment has remained a priority. This includes newer sectors like renewable energy. These too are dominated by multinationals whose headquarters are overseas.  Furthermore, as the leasing of ScotWind demonstrates, if anything, the Scottish government is accelerating the sell off of Scottish energy assets to private corporations and overseas state-owned utilities.
Our manufacturing base still remains important to us but recently we have lost of the Petro-chemical plant at Grangemouth, we have seen the end of production at the Mossmorran chemical works in Fife and more recently still, we have had the announcement that the bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis is proposing to close its Falkirk plant with more jobs and their attendant skills lost.
In the words of Strathclyde University’s Fraser of Allender Institute: “The evolution of manufacturing in Scotland and the UK is characterised by broad decline and growing dependency on a few subsectors and on imported goods…Though it has not always been the case, manufacturing today contributes more significantly to the Scottish economy than it does to the UK’s. This speaks to the resilience of Scottish manufacturing, whereby the sector has an outsized influence on economic performance – especially in periods of volatility.”
Can the EU save us
And yet in Scotland the dominant “Social Democratic” parties, the SNP and Labour have allowed and continue to allow our manufacturing capacity to collapse or be bought over by multinationals who have no interest in Scotland or the Scottish people beyond the profits they can generate. We need democratic control of our economy. So would rejoining the EU help us in that?
The answer is no. Firstly, our capacity to borrow to invest would be limited by the EU’s deficit and debt fiscal rules set out in the so-called Stability and Growth Pact which enforces an annual deficit ratio of 3% to GDP and an overall debt ratio of 60% to GDP.  At the moment, for example, the UK has a 4.2% deficit and a 94.2% debt almost certainly meaning that public expenditure would have to be cut, were we still in the EU.
These rules have contributed to the current economic decline of the EU. The former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi points out that Europe's economy has been in decline for decades, with stagnant productivity, falling investment and loss of market share. [v]
Add to that the shock of NATO’s proxy war with Russia over Ukraine and the impact that has had on cheap Russian energy supplies, especially to Germany, and you begin to understand why estimated GDP growth in EU countries is so poor, according to the IMF, [vi]from a "high" of 3.32% in Poland to 0.79% in Germany to 0.52% in Italy. [vii]
Secondly, while it is technically possible for a state within the EU to own an enterprise, that ownership can only be on the basis that the state behaves like a private enterprise company. State Aid rules generally forbid the use of subsidy, if that subsidy is not on the basis of a return for an investment that a private investor might make. The same kind of prescriptions apply to procurement. Were we in the EU we could not insist, for example, that publicly owned bus companies had to buy buses from a publicly owned Dennis Alexander. Any interventions made to support Alexander Dennis would be illegal if it were considered that a publicly owned enterprise was being given an advantage over other EU bus manufacturers.[viii]
Public control and public ownership
And yet, that is exactly the kind of intervention that we need to make in out economy if we are going to build an economy that is designed to support its people rather than our current model where our economy is structured to fill the coffers of global corporations. For as Commonweal points out Scotland is one of the most foreign-owned countries in the world. “Scotland has experienced a net outflow of wealth in every year since records began in 1998 – totalling around £277.4 billion between 1998 and 2021. Of this, £134.7 billion was extracted to the rest of the UK and £142.7 billion was extracted to the rest of the world.” [ix]
Scotland is in long term economic decline because, among other things, it has allowed large sections of its manufacturing base to be closed or be bought out by foreign capital. To try to address that by rejoining the EU would make the situation worse. It would limit our economic freedom through debt and deficit rules and limit our capacity to take control of Scottish assets. Nor would increased defence expenditure born out of NATO’s need to reinforce its capacity to impose Western capitalist imperialism on the rest of the globe help us grow our economy. It would be limited in its impact and wasteful given the desperate need we have for investment in our productive economy, rather than weapons that hopefully rust away in army warehouses. We need instead to take control of our economic destiny. We need public ownership, not just public control and we need it now.
 
 This is an expanded version of a contribution given as part of the Scottish Morning Star Conference on 24th May at the STUC, Glasgow.


[i] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8175/

[ii]https://leftfootforward.org/2026/05/what-have-andy-burnham-and-wes-streeting-said-about-rejoining-the-eu/

[iii] https://www.declassifieduk.org/nato-expansion-would-provoke-russians-uk-understood/

[iv] https://cnduk.org/adr/

[v] https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/draghi-report_en

[vii]https://www.imf.org/en/publications/weo/issues/2026/04/14/world-economic-outlook-april-2026

[viii] https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/state-aid_en

[ix] https://www.commonweal.scot/policies/profit-extraction/
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Despite much talk of a £5 billion “black hole” in Scotland’s funding, identified by Scotland's auditor general last year there was very little said by Scottish politicians on how such a deficit would impact on Local Government during the Scottish Parliament election campaign.

​Any objective assessment of the performance of the SNP incumbent administration in the Scottish Parliament, from a working-class perspective, ought to see them out on their ear. No matter where you turn, whether it’s the Cost of Living or Further and Higher Education, or Local Government, or the Health Service or the Schools or the Ferries, we find the same old neo-liberal obsession with fiscal rectitude and underfunding or poor planning or maladministration or all four.

And yet, you would need to have been living on the moon to think that asking Scottish voters with a leftwards inclination to vote Scottish Labour, is an easy ask. For although Anas Sarwar correctly called for Starmer to resign over welfare and warfare issues, the Scottish Labour party has remained largely inaudible and invisible on these and other issues, with a few, honourable, exceptions, not just in Westminster, but in Holyrood too.

What has Scottish Labour been saying, for example, about the need for redistribution of wealth through tax reform, or control of our economy through public ownership, or making life as difficult as possible for the Mafia style behaviour of US and its hitman Israel, by banning them from using our airports and denying them any support whatever, physical, moral or political.  

And yet on May 7th, socialists should vote Labour in the Scottish General Election. Not because of what Scottish Labour is, but because of what it could be - what it was designed to be - a vehicle for advancing working class interests. And incidentally I am not advocating a return to a mythical past of a socialist Britain under Labour. That past never existed, but as Mick Lynch noted in a recent interview, the difficulties the Labour Party encounters advancing class interests, will be the same for any workers’ party that develops the capacity to win political power. As soon as it appears to be on that road, it will face every possible strategy that capital can develop, in Paulo Feire’s words, to domesticate it.

And who could deny the success of that approach in the Labour Party since the demise of the left surge that took Jeremy Corbyn to power. But the very success of the Corbyn ‘project’ shows that there is nothing inevitable about the dominance of the forces of the right in the Labour party. The objectives of the right are to smooth the path for minimum redistribution in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility’ and encourage maximum exploitation in the name of ‘increased productivity’. Indeed, it is increasingly obvious that they are only capable of sustaining their position through undemocratic practice in the Labour party and increasing authoritarianism in wider society. And in this they have been exposed and are now very clearly in crisis.

And what’s more, there is no alternative to the left. The demise of Your Party in Scotland illustrated in graphic detail the problems of trying creating a new party from political fragments disengaged from working class concerns. Further the Scottish Greens’ support the £2 billion PFI project in 2023 highlights the compromise in the aims of the contemporary Green movement. The objective of that movement is greening the economy, with ‘Green’ capitalism as much, if not more likely, to be seen as the route to achieving this, rather than social ownership of the means of production and the land. As the Green co-leader Lorna Slater, then biodiversity minister, put it at the time: “Leveraging responsible private investment, through valuable partnerships like this, will be absolutely vital to meeting our climate targets and restoring our natural environment.”

But the left can only take advantage of that opportunity in Scotland, if there is a group of socialists in the Scottish Parliament who can offer a different agenda for Scotland, socialist MSPs elected on a Scottish Labour ticket. I mean active, campaigning socialists like Katie Clark, Monica Lennon, and Carol Mochan. Undoubtedly, after this election Scottish Labour needs a re-set, but a socialist re-set requires the experience and commitment of socialist MSP. So, get out and Vote Labour on May 7th and help get the Labour vote out as well.  Let's do all that we can to make sure we return socialist MSPs.

Polls sug­gest that Reform could win up to 20 seats. For some, this sig­nals the troub­ling shift of the grow­ing pres­ence of a harder right within Scot­tish polit­ics. For oth­ers, it rep­res­ents a long-awaited dis­rup­tion to an Estab­lish­ment they don’t feel rep­res­ents them.
What is clear is that the next par­lia­ment will include both Scot­tish Tor­ies and Reform MSPs who are, at best, scep­tical of devol­u­tion and, at worst, openly hos­tile to it.
Con­trary to Reform UK’s desire to present itself as an insur­gent force, even a curs­ory glance through the Tory and Reform UK mani­fes­tos reveals the sim­il­ar­it­ies between the two.
There are the usual pledges to cut tax and to “fix” pub­lic ser­vices. Both prom­ise a “bon­fire of the quan­gos” and to weaken the Scot­tish state to fund tax relief for the richest. Both mani­fes­tos hint of work­ing closely with the UK gov­ern­ment in what is a clear dream of being in power in West­min­ster in 2029.
The over­lap is not just ideo­lo­gical but organ­isa­tional. Two-thirds of Reform’s can­did­ates are former Tor­ies. It can never be said loudly enough, the Tor­ies and Reform are two sides of the same coin.
Under­stand­ing Reform’s rise means look­ing bey­ond the head­line hype. Much of its sup­port comes from the same pro-union elect­or­ate that has his­tor­ic­ally backed the Con­ser­vat­ives, but it also draws in voters dis­il­lu­sioned with Labour, as well as those simply rolling the dice on something new. This is less a dra­matic expan­sion of right-wing sup­port in Scot­land than a recon­fig­ur­a­tion of it.
His­tor­ic­ally, expli­citly rightwing parties have struggled to achieve the same level of sup­port in Scot­land as they have else­where in the UK. Even at high points for the right, such as the era of Ukip’s prom­in­ence in 2017, their com­bined vote share lagged sig­ni­fic­antly behind that seen in Eng­land and Wales.
Cur­rent trends sug­gest a sim­ilar pat­tern: the right is not neces­sar­ily grow­ing so much as recal­ib­rat­ing. While the arrival of Reform may feel like a surge, it is in many ways a redis­tri­bu­tion of an exist­ing base. However, the impact on par­lia­ment­ary dynam­ics should not be under­es­tim­ated.
On May 8, we will have an emboldened and more arrog­ant breed of Tory mak­ing noise in the cham­ber, and much of that noise will be against our demo­cratic struc­tures them­selves.
At times it can be hard to defend devol­u­tion. One in four chil­dren in Scot­land are liv­ing in poverty, 220,000 emer­gency food­bank par­cels were issued in 2025, people are dying wait­ing for treat­ment due to NHS 
wait­ing times, and our pub­lic ser­vices are on their knees. For many, these real­it­ies call into ques­tion what devol­u­tion has truly delivered. Yet it would be wrong to dis­miss its achieve­ments.
Com­pared to suc­cess­ive West­min­ster gov­ern­ments, Scot­land has often pur­sued more pro­gress­ive policies there­fore mit­ig­at­ing aspects of aus­ter­ity, main­tain­ing ele­ments of uni­ver­sal pro­vi­sion, and embed­ding a stronger emphasis on fair work. Free uni­versity tuition and pre­scrip­tions, a more pro­gress­ive income tax struc­ture, and until the pan­demic, a rel­at­ively pro­tec­ted pub­lic sec­tor, are tan­gible out­comes of devolved decision­mak­ing.
These gains are not insig­ni­fic­ant. They reflect the ori­ginal pur­pose of devol­u­tion which was to give people in Scot­land greater demo­cratic con­trol and to enable policies that bet­ter reflect social pri­or­it­ies.
At the same time, devol­u­tion has not fully met its prom­ise. The Scot­tish gov­ern­ment has too often fallen short for work­ing people.
After nearly two dec­ades in office, the SNP has repeatedly failed to match its rhet­oric with action, par­tic­u­larly on invest­ment in pub­lic ser­vices. Prom­ised trans­form­a­tions, from fair work to a National Care Ser­vice and a just trans­ition, have been delayed, diluted or stalled alto­gether, leav­ing work­ers facing uncer­tainty rather than secur­ity.
While West­min­ster aus­ter­ity has con­strained choices, the Scot­tish gov­ern­ment has not always used the powers it holds to rebuild capa­city, strengthen col­lect­ive pro­vi­sion, or con­sist­ently pri­or­it­ise work­ers’ pay, con­di­tions and job secur­ity.
Devol­u­tion was not gran­ted lightly. It was the product of dec­ades of organ­ising by the labour move­ment and civic soci­ety, rooted in the belief that decisions affect­ing people’s lives should be made closer to those that they impact.
It was, at its core, a demo­cratic advance. That achieve­ment now faces a dif­fer­ent kind of chal­lenge. Not out­right abol­i­tion, although some advoc­ate for it, but a gradual hol­low­ing out which will reduce the scope of devolved powers, align­ing more closely with West­min­ster pri­or­it­ies, and refram­ing devolved insti­tu­tions as obstacles rather than instru­ments of change.
The rise of Reform UK speaks to a wider dis­sat­is­fac­tion in polit­ics. Many voters are search­ing for altern­at­ives, and in the past that desire has fuelled sup­port for other parties, includ­ing the SNP. The ques­tion now is how that demand for change is met.
Trade uni­ons must defend devol­u­tion because it rep­res­ents demo­cratic power that was won through struggle, not gran­ted from above, and because it cre­ates space for work­ing people to organ­ise, cam­paign and influ­ence decisions that shape their lives.
Devolved insti­tu­tions bring polit­ical decision-mak­ing closer to work­ers and com­munit­ies, mak­ing it easier to chal­lenge injustice, demand account­ab­il­ity and win improve­ments in pub­lic ser­vices, pay and con­di­tions. Devol­u­tion is not an end in itself but a means; it is a set of levers that can be used to res­ist aus­ter­ity, strengthen col­lect­ive pro­vi­sion and push for more pro­gress­ive policies where West­min­ster has too often failed.
Defend­ing devol­u­tion is there­fore about defend­ing the polit­ical space in which work­ers can organ­ise, be heard and fight col­lect­ively for change.
If its defend­ers fail to make that case, oth­ers, like Reform UK will fill the vacuum for those who see devol­u­tion not as a found­a­tion to build on, but as a bar­rier to be removed.
Ruby Gib­son is PCS national officer for Scot­land writing in a personal capacity. This article first appeared in the Morning Star on 21st April 2026 morningstaronline.co.uk/

This article is based on a speech delivered by Brian Leishman MP for the Morning Star Fringe at the STUC Congress, April 21st 2026.
​
​We had a decade and a half of austerity where the richest won and communities all over the country were ripped apart. The poorest and most vulnerable in society have been put back into Victorian era poverty.

​Then we had a global pandemic that saw an even greater divide in wealth as the richest accumulated even more assets and drove the prices of everything upwards impacting most severely on the working class.
This was followed by a cost-of-living crisis that has further exaggerated inequality with millions in our society seeing their living standards deteriorate. Mainstream politicians allowed all this to happen because of ideology, incompetence or inertia. It’s no wonder there’s so much disenfranchisement, disengagement and despair and that people are having their heads turned by Farage and Reform.
Yesterday, at STUC congress we heard about the danger of Reform from Anas Sarwar and you’ll hear it again today from John Swinney.
However, neither of them will own up to the political failings that have led people to feel the way they do right now.
And I want to consider another reason why austerity and inequality is on the rise – its warfare. Both in the media and in Westminster support for adopting war as a solution to the global crises  we face,  is growing at a frightening pace.
Every 6 weeks Defence Questions are the most depressing and worrying session we have in Parliament.  In nearly every corner of the Chamber there is agreement for increasing military spending to 5% of GDP; for becoming a ‘Defence Industry Powerhouse’; for getting Britain ‘war ready’.
The endless promotion of militarism as the economic solution that will improve living standards for the millions that need it – is an idea that is as silly as it is terrifying.
Because Defence is clearly not a UK wide industry. The Ministry of Defence figures highlight that defence employment is densely concentrated in specific geographical regions of the country. 
Military spending supports less than 1% of the UK workforce so it won’t be the working class which sees the benefits of billions of pounds being spent. 
Neither will it be small and medium sized businesses.  They only secure 5% of Defence orders.  Increasing Defence spending will benefit the giant weapons manufacturers.
Of course, pursuing economic growth and improving people’s living standards are the right things to do, but thinking militarism is the way to achieve it is at best misguided and at worst will further jeopardise global safety.
In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock forward.  It is 85 seconds to midnight.  The closest we have ever been to the end of the world.
Make no mistake. This is a class issue.  War always has been. 
Firstly, the Government cut International Development Aid, impacting some of the most vulnerable and oppressed people in the world.  It was framed as a necessary saving, as Defence spending needs to be increased.  It was instead a betrayal of our internationalism.
Then there were the £7 billion worth of proposed cuts to Welfare. That was a domestic betrayal of our movement.
I am highly critical of the Labour Party, certainly its current leadership, but I have hope because the left of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the trade unions and disability organisations and charities came together. We were organised and we were effective and we stopped most of these cuts.
And we will need that level of organisation again, because there will be more proposals put forward to cut welfare and this time it will be framed as necessary for Defence reasons.
Ultimately, it’s all about political choices. Instead of buying weapons and talking about some sort of defence dividend what about what Tony Benn called ‘a peace dividend’.
That is the choice facing us. Do we allow the Lockheed Martins and BAE Systems to take our money, creating even more inequality, or do we invest in healthcare, education, public services, properly funded local councils, police, fire fighting services, infrastructure?
Do we give more control to the big private corporate companies or do we take ownership of energy and other key sectors of the economy?
That is the choice, comrades to destroy or to build.  Things really are that black and white.
We all know what workers and communities need. Now we have to come together and fight for it.

​The GCU management have announced plans to cut up to 100 posts through a “targeted” voluntary redundancy scheme in response to an estimated deficit of £10 million which is a result, management claim, of reduced numbers of international students, mainly due to a collapse in recruitment at the university’s London campus — a debacle covered by the Financial Times.
Currently GCU is not in deficit and has considerable reserves but management are refusing to use these to mitigate the funding crisis, even on an interim basis. So far, the take up of offers for voluntary redundancy had been very limited and management are refusing to rule out compulsory redundancies.
Both institutions are suffering from a systemic underfunding which is undermining higher education across the UK.
It takes a different shape in Scotland because the Scottish Parliament decided to adopt a policy of no tuition fees, as opposed to the high levels of student fees seen in England — from £3,225 in 2010 to £9,535 in 2024. Student fees have undoubtedly contributed to the debt burden on students in England and limited access to higher education by working-class students.
The argument that the lack of fee income from students in Scotland is the primary source of the crisis is ignoring the reduction in Scottish government support.
Since 2014/15, funding per student in Scotland has fallen by 39 per cent in real terms, while the Scottish Funding Council Research Excellence Grant has fallen by 43 per cent. Meanwhile operational costs, staff salaries, and infrastructure maintenance have continued to rise.  
In Scotland, as in England, universities have come to rely on income earned from international students to address financial shortfalls. International students pay between £10,000 and £40,000 annually in contrast to the £1,820 notional fee for Scottish students. However, data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) in 2025 reveals a 12 per cent drop in international enrolments — from 83,975 in 2022-23 to 73,915 in 2023-24, with an estimated cost £150 million.
Some of this has been a consequence of Westminster’s attempt to tighten regulations on immigration, for example, the restrictions on bringing in dependants. This has led a sharp decline in the number of international students on taught postgraduate courses. The more serious issue though, is we now have a higher education system that is dependent on a source of funding which is increasingly volatile — from currency fluctuations in some countries to competition from Australia and the US.
The result of all this has been a tsunami of job loss from the higher education sector in Scotland: the universities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian, Heriot Watt, Stirling, Strathclyde and West of Scotland have all lost staff and risk losing more. According to the Herald newspaper across eight higher education institutions in Scotland, approximately 1,000 jobs have already been lost to severance schemes since 2024 and as many as 2,200 further posts could be at risk.  
Staff have responded with strikes, and action short of strikes and, with the Scottish election approaching in May, intense lobbying of parties and candidates for the Scottish Parliament. On April 24 there will be a rally in Glasgow as part of a day of action that will include strike action.
So what are the Scottish political parties we might loosely call progressive, saying about this crisis? Their manifestos might offer more hope but there is little in what they are currently saying that would give staff and students reason to believe that change is on the way.
As the party of government, the SNP is very much in the firing line, but it seems impervious to the depth of the crisis higher education faces. In their budget statement, the SNP government announced a combined increase in resource and capital funding for universities of £55m, as a “significant real-terms increase.” The university sector dismissed it as insufficient.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS): “Without substantial increases in devolved revenues, improvements in public-sector efficiency or cuts to other spending, it will be increasingly difficult for future Scottish governments to continue to provide a wider range of free services — such as university tuition and personal care — than their counterparts elsewhere in the UK.”
How Scottish Labour might tackle this dilemma is also a bit of a mystery. Their policy commitment for 2026 is rather cryptic: like the SNP they promise to “maintain free university tuition for Scottish students.”
How they might do this is left entirely unclear: it is to “…work with the higher education sector to find a funding model that ensures the long-term sustainability for the sector.” But we are given no hint as to the nature of the “model.”
For a serious solution you have to look at the manifesto produced by the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) to grasp what workers need from political parties: “Politicians need to be honest that taxes will have to rise … They have the power to do so through property, land, wealth and other taxes, such as a private jet tax, an online sales tax, and a levy on alcohol retailers.”
It is an approach which Ken Drury, currently standing for the executive council for Unite in the education sector, fully endorses. Drury said: “It’s time to stop just paying lip service to the importance of higher education, and to start to fund it properly.”
This article first appeared in the Morning Star ​morningstaronline.co.uk/  on Tuesday 14th April 2026 

​The Scottish Labour Party describes itself as “the party of devolution” but is that commitment shared by this Labour government?

The Tories were accused of conducting a “power grab” of devolved rights. Are we seeing a continuation of that approach by Labour? The first elections for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly in 1999 resulted in a honeymoon period with Labour in government in Scotland, Wales and across the UK.
While the electoral systems adopted for the devolved administrations was designed to ensure no overall majority for one party, the architects must have thought that Labour would be the biggest party in Scotland and Wales into the foreseeable future.

How wrong they were. Labour’s dominance in Scotland only survived for two elections before it was overtaken by the SNP in 2007. Just four years later the SNP achieved what was supposed to be impossible, an overall majority, giving Alex Salmond the credibility to demand an independence referendum. This miscalculation that Scotland was innately Labour almost certainly came from the influential Scots in Tony Blair’s front-bench team.

The announcement of a referendum on devolution, made while Labour was still in opposition, was fronted by George Robertson, Donald Dewar, Gordon Brown and Robin Cook.
A significant part of that statement launching the policy was that sovereignty would remain at Westminster.George Robertson had claimed that the devolution they had designed would kill demands for independence “stone dead.” His aim had been to devise a form of devolution that was “integrationist and the death knell for separatism.”  Meanwhile, those Labour Party members and others who had campaigned for devolution over decades were sidelined.

One has to question the political judgement of those involved including Gordon Brown who 20 years earlier had edited the Red Paper on Scotland with authors such as Tom Nairn and David Gow. He ought to have had the insight and political understanding to realise this strategy was misguided.
A badly thought-through, half-hearted devolution that did not adopt a federalist structure was only going to lay the ground for future problems.

The 1997 general election had given every indication that Labour in Scotland was on a roll. The Scottish Conservatives were wiped out, failing to win even one Scottish seat in Westminster.
At the May Day celebrations the following weekend, there was palpable joy that the Tories, who had run Scotland from Westminster for 18 years, had gone. The policies of rate caping, the poll tax and the re-organisation of local government which had undermined the right of Scotland to make local decisions on raising and spending local taxes had been rejected by the Scottish electorate.

At the first Scottish parliamentary elections in 1999 the combined first past the post and PR voting arrangement gave the SNP a firm base from which to build and allowed the Conservative Party a re-entry into representation from which it went on to become the main opposition in 2016 and 2021, pushing Labour into third place.The miscalculation made was never properly explored or analysed by either Scottish or U K Labour. So, when David Cameron gave the go-ahead for an independence referendum to be held on 2014, the Scottish Labour Party was unprepared.

Because Scottish Labour leaders had never fully accepted that the Scottish Parliament should honour the “Claim of Right” adopted by the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1989 for “the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs…” it was unable to pose an alternative to either nationalism or unionism. Instead, it adopted a unionist position and joined the Tories in “Better Together.”

Ever since, Scottish Labour has been in a downward spiral. It had a slight reprieve in the 2017 Westminster elections and made significant gains in 2024, but in the Scottish Parliament it has lost support and seats at every election and that is expected to continue in May this year when it could have as few as 18 MSPs and possibly drop to fourth place.

In 2020 Gordon Brown established the Commission for the UK’s Future. Both the process and the report had many faults, but it did contain one clear proposal that was deliverable by a future Labour government and that was that the House of Lords should be replaced with a new second chamber called the assembly of nations and regions.

It was to be directly elected and have powers to safeguard the constitution and give a direct voice in the UK Parliament for the nations and regions. At the launch of the commission’s report in December 2022 Keir Starmer committed himself to include the replacement of the  House of Lords with an elected assembly in the next Labour Party manifesto. Unsurprisingly there was no such commitment in the manifesto. In fact, it was the first manifesto since 2010 that didn’t include a commitment to an elected second chamber.

Since Starmer’s election as leader in 2020 there have been so many examples of firm pledges not being kept that it is now expected. Steve Reed, Starmer’s Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, should actually be called the secretary of state for England as his department’s responsibilities are devolved. But he has been sidestepping the devolved administrations by using Pride of Place funding to deal directly with Scottish and Welsh local authorities and in the process distorting local priorities and directing money that would have come anyway into ringfenced projects.
The thinking behind this has become quite explicit in a recently leaked memo in which Starmer warned his Cabinet against an “overly deferential” approach to the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish governments.

Far from being the party of devolution, Labour is adopting the Boris Johnson approach and is rolling back 27 years of devolution. Local government in Scotland was already at the mercy of the Scottish government’s centralising tendencies and is now receiving the same treatment from the UK government. Unfortunately, despite his much-publicised break with Starmer, Anas Sarwar does not appear to be using the opportunity of the Scottish elections to reassert Labour’s claim to home rule.

Pauline Bryan is Convenor of the Red Paper Collective. This article was first published in the Morning Star on 31st March 2026 morningstaronline.co.uk

​This week members of Unite will be receiving ballot papers for the elections of the Unite Executive Council which will hold office from 1st May until to 30th April 2029. The papers are currently being distributed and must be returned by 27th April. 

​I will be voting for those candidates standing under the banner of Members United. There are a number of reasons for this but on a blog dedicated to supporting the Labour left I want to concentrate on only one issue: Unite’s relationship to the Labour Party. You can get a full list of Members United and why they are standing here: https://membersunited.uk/

For some time now Unite members have woken up to headlines like this: Unite boss Sharon Graham threatens to break link with Labour on eve of conference. To put it mildly breaking the Union’s link with the Labour Party would be drastic and catastrophic. Almost since the beginning of her term of office Sharon has flirted with the ultra-left notion that leaving the Labour Party will advance working class interests. It won’t.

Of course, at this point we need to acknowledge that the Labour Party under Starmer has been awful. In addition to attempts at cutting welfare, being tepid in its criticism of the genocidal acts of Israel, and supportive of the aggressive imperialism of the US -  even when it was advancing positive elements in its programme, most notably improved workers’ rights, it appears to listen more closely to business than workers.
All of this Sharon has rightly criticised, although there was some well-deserved criticism of her in the slow response to the Gaza crisis and her enthusiasm for Starmer’s promises of increased defence expenditure without addressing the likely down side of that position - pressure to pay for it by reducing public expenditure with the implications of that for welfare spending and local government jobs and services.

The concern is surely not just what is wrong with Starmer’s programme but what do we do about it? In its constitution Unite is very clear about how we tackle political issues that impact on its members:
“On Politics
2.1.4 To have a strong political voice, fighting on behalf of working peoples’ interests, and to influence the political agenda locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, so as to promote a socialist vision for
• a more equal society in which wealth is distributed from the rich to the poor, including by means of progressive taxation and other regulatory measures to restrict excessive wealth 3 Amended and Published March 2024
• a collective society in which public services are directly provided on the basis of public need and not private greed, and a fair system of welfare and benefits to support those in need
• public ownership of important areas of economic activity and services, including health, education, water, post, rail and local passenger transport.
2.1.5 To further political objectives including by affiliation to the Labour Party.”

If we abandon this position, there is only one weapon left at our disposal – industrial struggle. That struggle is of course absolutely necessary but it is not enough. We all know the struggles from the 1980s onwards where, despite heroic efforts like the miners’ strike, without a political strategy and a political party to implement it, we could not prevail.

So, what are possible the alternatives to affiliation to the Labour Party? Surely, we are not expected to consider Your Party? It is becoming painfully clear that Your Party is now an unhappy alliance of two rival political factions, paralysed by that difference.

Or how about the Greens? The Greens in both Scotland and England and Wales may have the worthy ambition, to quote the constitution of the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) “to develop and implement ecological policies consistent with the Philosophical Basis of the Party as expressed in Policies for a Sustainable Society.”
But that is not about putting power in the hands of workers. Indeed, the role of Trade Unionists in the Green party is to win trade Unionists to vote Green not change the Green Party to advocate trade union objectives:
“The role of the Trade Union Liaison Committee shall be to support the work of the GPEW and coordinate and strengthen the Party’s work with the trade union movement and other workers’ organisations.”
​
It is abundantly clear to me that the only potential for serious social change in Britain is the Labour Party. But that is only true if there is vibrant Left in the Labour Party working in alliance with the trade unions for social transformation of the nations and regions of Britain. This project is at serious risk if we do not have an Unite Executive committed to keeping the link despite the best efforts of the General Secretary and her allies to undermine that. So, vote for a militant union that leads from the front and doesn’t moan from the sidelines. Vote for Members United candidates. 

You can access the re-launched Citizen here: ​The Citizen — Campaign for Socialism