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 THE planned cuts to welfare is a defining moment for this government. Keir Starmer has a political choice to make — does he dish up more of the same austerity that the Conservatives inflicted on the most disadvantaged people in our society, or does he do the right thing and look after our most vulnerable citizens?
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 Demonstration on Grangemouth at Scottish Labour Conference Despite the double whammy of electoral woes facing Scottish Labour, with the UK Labour Government recently overtaken in the opinion polls by the gutter politics of the Reform party and the news that the Scottish party’s support had halved since the election, somewhat surprisingly, the Scottish Labour Conference was brimming with excitement. Nowhere was this clearer than In Anas Sarwar’s speech on Friday, with his limitless optimism on full display as he declared ‘We will defy the odds again…we will win in 2026,’ to rapturous applause.  IT MUST have felt like a nightmare for Anas Sarwar last Sunday morning. The very week that the Scottish Labour Party is to meet and in effect launch its bid for power in the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections, the Sunday Times published a Norstat poll that would give Scottish Labour its worst result in the forthcoming elections since the inception of the Scottish parliament in 1999.
 THE last time there was a Labour government in Westminster and an SNP government in Holyrood was 18 years ago. That was in the middle of a financial crisis and only lasted two years. 2010 was the first time that a Scottish government had to deal with a Tory UK government.
 IF I may adapt that old expression used of the US economy, it seems that if leader of the British Labour Party Keir Starmer sneezes, Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, gets a good deal worse than a bad cold. Starmer’s December Ipsos poll ratings show only 27 per cent of respondents were satisfied with his performance, with 61 per cent dissatisfied. This comes on the back of a slew of controversial policy decisions and, more importantly, an economy that is showing little sign of the growth Starmer promised, even if it is very early days of the promised infrastructural projects.
 ANAS SARWAR, leader of the Scottish Labour Party, took everyone by surprise — at least everyone outside his inner circle — when he announced last week that should Labour win the 2026 election in Scotland, all pensioners would receive a payment of the Pension Age Winter Heating Payment which will be paid by Social Security Scotland.
 IN THE discussion around the Budget, you may have noticed the odd reference to “modern supply-side economics,” much beloved of the Biden and now the Starmer administrations.
Supply side economics in Britain was an ideological approach shared by both Labour’s last administration and of course the Tories.  THE Scottish media is, naturally, dominated by the death of Alex Salmond. His life makes good copy: a stellar rise to almost achieving independence in the referendum of 2014 as leader of the SNP and First Minister of Scotland to a prolonged fall.
First, he announced his resignation as leader of the SNP and first minster immediately after the failure to win the referendum and then in 2020 he faced a criminal prosecution on charges of sexual assault. The jury returned not guilty verdicts on 12 charges and a not proven verdict on a charge of sexual assault with intent to rape.  THE crisis of capitalism, which provided the context and to some extent fuelled the vibrant Yes campaign described by Coll McCail in his excellent article on Wednesday, is still with us.
The question which has haunted the Scottish left before and since the referendum is how we can maximise unity in order to challenge the power of capital in Britain and Scotland  JUST IN CASE there was still any reason to believe that somehow Scotland does not harbour an anti-immigrant and racist right, this last year has demonstrated beyond doubt that such assumptions are very wide of the mark. The evidence has not only come in polling forecasts, and actual votes, but from the streets
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