ANAS Sarwar must be beelin. He grandstands on the NHS just about every week at First Minister’s Questions – and now one of his London bosses has just pulled the rug from out underneath him.
On Sunday, privatisation-loving Labour shadow health secretary Wes Streeting appeared on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg Show – and in response to questions about lengthy waiting times and staffing shortages in the NHS in Labour-run Wales insisted that the shortcomings are ultimately the responsibility of Westminster funding squeezes.
Streeting told Kuenssberg that the SNP "privately believed" that a Labour government in Westminster would be better for the NHS in Scotland.
I'm not sure it's so private. The Monster Raving Looney Party would be better for the NHS in Scotland than the chaos and corruption mongers of the current Tory administration.
Streeting was then challenged on whether his party could be trusted to run the NHS, given what she called the "terrible problems" in the Welsh health service.
Streeting noted that the NHS is in crisis across the whole of the UK, adding: “All roads lead back to Westminster because even though this is devolved, decisions made in Westminster have an impact on the whole country."
Labour can't have it both ways, if the problems besetting the Labour-run NHS in Wales are fundamentally due to a funding issue originating in Westminster, as Streeting claimed, then Labour cannot argue that similar issues besetting NHS Scotland are entirely the responsibility of the SNP.
Mind you, that won't stop Anas Sarwar from putting on his best sneery face and trying.
READ MORE: Ex-Labour MP: Wes Streeting has caused FMQs headache for Anas Sarwar
Streeting's point is in fact obvious, even if the opportunists of the Labour party in Scotland refuse to acknowledge it for political reasons.
If the NHS across the entire UK is in crisis, then the responsibility cannot lie with devolved governments whose budgets depend upon block grants from Westminster, block grants which have shrunk in real terms due to the effect of inflation.
Moreover, the governments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland lack the full range of tax raising and borrowing powers available to Westminster – and the Labour party is vocal in its insistence that Holyrood does not need such powers.
Instead we get treated to the weekly pantomime of Anas Sarwar or Jackie Baillie insisting that the Scottish Government increase spending on health or social care without ever saying what other areas of Scottish Government spending should be cut in order to fund it.
Labour are the fantasy football of Scottish politics. Westminster isn't working for Scotland, even the Labour party is having to admit that essential truth.
What the Labour party still won't admit is that a centre-right Westminster government headed by Keir Starmer – a government committed to Conservative spending limits and refusing to raise taxes on the wealthy – won't work for Scotland either.
Talking of the wealthy, billionaire anti-immigration Brexit supporter Jim Radcliffe, who owns the Ineos company which recently announced the decision to close down the Grangemouth refinery, admitted over the weekend that Brexit hadn't turned out as people anticipated.
That's not entirely true, many of us anticipated that Brexit would be an unmitigated disaster, but the likes of Jim refused to heed the warnings. As soon as he realised it was a disaster, he moved to the tax haven of Monaco – and his car factory moved to France.
If Brexit really was working then the UK could use its freedom from EU laws to make it illegal for someone that doesn't pay tax in this country and is legally resident in a tax haven abroad, such as Jim Radcliffe, to own a critical piece of national infrastructure, like the Grangemouth Refinery.
But the Tories didn't push for Brexit in order to ensure that the wealthy pay their fair share.
READ MORE: Brexit doing 'untold damage' to Scotland's economy, new report shows
Radcliffe said that the Conservatives had had a "good innings" but it was time for change. "Good innings" must be a euphemism for 14 years of austerity, chaos, and corruption.
Radcliffe blamed crumbling public services on the UK being overcrowded. Apparently, Britain was only ever "designed" for 50 million people.
But if he wanted to see the real reason why public services in the UK are so poor, rather than channel a Daily Express reader and put the blame on immigrants, he could get a mirror from B&M for under a tenner.
Immigrants in the UK pay a higher share of their income in taxation than the very wealthy do.
If billionaires like Jim paid their proper share of taxes instead of buggering off to tax havens like Monaco, just maybe public services in the UK might be somewhat better off.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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