BY the time you read this you will know who will form the next UK government. At the time of writing, the polling stations were still open but it looked pretty certain that Keir Starmer will be the next prime minister, even if the situation in Scotland remained too close to call.

Like many independence supporters, I’ve found this a tough election. On the one hand, I desperately wanted the Tories out and the only party capable of displacing them at Westminster is Labour. So, in effect, I wanted Labour to win the election. But not in Scotland.

That’s because I also wanted the election to in some way move the campaign for Scottish independence forward. The SNP had promised to place independence at the heart of its election campaign and in some senses they did that.

Their support for independence was on the opening page of the manifesto and it was referenced in many of the major speeches, particularly in an excellent argument by John Swinney in which he articulately explained why the issue was central to any hopes of rebuilding Scotland to more accurately reflect the values and aspirations of those who live here.

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But the SNP are still struggling to identify a way past Westminster’s anti-democratic block of refusing to consider a second independence referendum under any imaginable circumstances.

Even a 2015 UK election which returned 56 SNP MPs out of 59 in Scotland failed to smash that block so what could this election do to achieve what 2015 could not?

This is frustrating but we should not forget who is responsible for this lack of progress. Who is refusing to recognise that a democratic vote for a pro-independence party is a vote for a second independence referendum.

Who is blocking the democratic path to independence and refusing to recognise any circumstances in which that block is removed. It is not the SNP. It is the two Unionist parties locked in a battle that can only result in Scotland being dragooned into remaining inside the Union with no way out.

Scotland’s largest pro-independence party this year faced specific challenges that hardly need listed in this of all newspapers. The result was a likely Labour revival north of the Border, the size of which was impossible to accurately predict but which will be known by now.

Although the election was always unlikely to bring independence itself closer, the result certainly had the potential to move it further into the future if the number of Labour MPs has risen significantly.

So what do we already know about what the result of a Labour government in Westminster will be? The picture is hardly inspiring.

There will not, for example, be a reversal of Brexit, the single biggest act of self-harm the UK Government has been guilty of for decades. Just this week Starmer ruled out the UK rejoining the EU single market in his lifetime. That will disappoint many within the ranks of his own party as well as the majority of voters in Scotland. 

There will not be a significant challenge to the austerity measures championed by the last four Tory PMs. Starmer’s words may claim otherwise but his actions reek of timidity. He has been unwilling to commit his new government to many specific spending pledges until he deems them affordable. For example, in a recent interview with The Big Issue, he would not commit even to introducing free bus travel for young people under the age of 22, which those in Scotland already enjoy.

Tory spending cuts have hit poorer areas twice as hard as the more prosperous areas in the south. London and the areas around it will, according to the consultants EY, account for 40% of UK economic growth within just three years. Yet Labour will seek merely to “mitigate” rather than reverse spending cuts agreed by Rishi Sunak.

Labour won’t raise taxes to ease the pressure on public spending either. In an interview with Sky News, Starmer said he “rejects the argument” that tax rises are needed to rebuild public services but doesn’t explain how he’ll do that beyond a vague plan to “grow the economy”.

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The Labour leader also rejected pleas to scrap the two-child benefit cap which has affected an estimated 1.5 million children. 

That rather makes a mockery of Gordon Brown’s recent “vow” that Labour are committed to a “root-and-branch review of the Universal Credit system that has produced the two-child rule”. Even the Labour leadership must by now be praying for an end to Brown’s pronouncements from on high.

Nor will a Labour government be better for the planet. Starmer has already climbed down from a flagship pledge to spend £28 billion per year on what was called a “green investment plan”.

Trident’s removal from Scotland? It’s a no that to that, too. Any measures to make sure Scotland benefits from its renewable energy in a way it was stopped from benefiting from its oil and gas?

What do you think?

I remember previous Labour General Election victories which followed years of disastrous Tory governments and signalled new hope for the future. Today there will be few who will greet the result with that same fervour.

Labour must now shoulder the responsibility of proving that it is more than simply not the Conservative Party, and that they have at least some ideas which can bring about even a small part of that “change” its candidates endlessly banged on about throughout the campaign, hard though it might be to find details of them.

That must surely mean rewarding those Scottish voters who have given them their support, as well as addressing both the dysfunctional relationship with its own Scottish operation and the disdain with which it holds the views of around half of the population of Scotland.

For weeks, Anas Sarwar made much of the benefits of putting Scotland “at the heart” of a new Labour government. He was at it again in The Guardian as recently as Tuesday, claiming that voting for Labour would return Scotland to “the centre of politics in Westminster, participating in government rather than as a second-rank opposition party with insufficient muscle to change laws”.

We have, of course, been promised similar benefits before. In 2014 we were told if we voted No to independence we would “lead rather than leave” the Union.

It was a lie then and it is a lie now. The minute Scotland does as it’s told we are forgotten about.

Sarwar even had the temerity in February to describe the SNP and the Conservatives as “the very best of frenemies” when we know now that Labour abandoned Aberdeen South in 2019 because it wanted the Tories to beat the SNP.

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Johann Lamont, the former Labour leader in Scotland, accused party HQ of treating her colleagues like a ‘’branch office’’ when she resigned in 2014 and that has never been more true than in recent months. Starmer has flatly contradicted Sarwar on Gaza, on trans rights and on the devolution of employment law.

These were just more indications of his arrogant dismissal of Scotland’s support for another independence referendum despite the country’s record of voting for pro-independence candidates. Starmer has consistently ruled out any circumstances when he would agree to a referendum.

This is how he treated Scotland before the election and his actions following the vote will be closely scrutinised by those SNP voters who were so desperate to see the back of the Tories that they voted Labour just to make sure.

SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has argued that a Labour government implementing Conservative policies at Westminster will push support for independence more consistently over the 50% mark.

Now that we have a Labour government – and Scottish Labour MPs – it would be a foolish gambler who would bet against him.