Richard Murphy: We’re set for a terrible choice in the 2026 election

Even in Scotland, where the distinction between political parties – depending upon whether they are pro-independence or not – should make some of their differences clear, many people still hold this opinion. Their claim is that there is very little to distinguish one politician from another.

I wish I could disagree with those making this claim, but increasingly, I am finding it hard to do so. My reason for saying so is straightforward.

If I reduce my argument, for convenience, to a comparison between the SNP and Labour, as the two largest parties seeking power in Scotland at present, it is apparent that in very many ways these two parties have much more in common than they do have differences.

Let me explain. If we stand back from the day-to-day spats that are a feature of political life, what is very obviously true of both these parties at present is that they lack any coherent political narrative that explains their purpose.

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Looking at the SNP first, what anyone would expect of them is that a belief in Scottish independence should be at the core of all that they do. However, what is clear to anyone is that the party’s leadership has not had, since the days when Nicola Sturgeon was in charge, any real idea about how to achieve that objective.

Nor, even more surprisingly, can they easily explain what the benefits of independence might be, and they are just as unable to explain how it might be achieved.

In other words, when it comes to their core purpose, the SNP leadership appear to be very confused and, worse than that, to have no adequate explanation as to what the party is about. No wonder their support is at a low ebb.

The same might, however, be just as fairly said of Labour, albeit for different reasons. I am old enough to recall a time when I could easily explain exactly what I thought Labour existed to deliver. As a social democratic party, it was dedicated to supporting the rights of the working person and all those in society who needed the support of the government to achieve a state of wellbeing.

As a consequence, Labour were willing to embrace the idea of a large state, government intervention in the economy and high taxes to ensure the redistribution of income and wealth from those who enjoyed plenty to those who had little.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar with Keir Starmer

All of those certainties about Labour would now appear to belong to a time long past. The Labour leadership might still claim that they are a left-of-centre party, but their actions appear to persistently belie their words.

They have, so far, since being in office, refused to consider increasing most taxes on income from wealth.

At the same time, their interventions in the economy, whether they be through the creation of GB Energy or a supposed National Wealth Fund, are small in scale and look much more like private equity funds than they do like the direct state interventions of old.

And, as everyone is all too aware, their refusal to take children out of poverty in England, coupled with their insistence that pensioners should lose their support for winter fuel bills, makes them look more mean-spirited than any Tory of old might have done.

Labour are, in that case, just as much without an explanation as to what they are about as the SNP are.

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On top of that similarity, there is something else that these two parties seem to share. While it might be that many in their memberships might be drawn from those in society who think themselves to be on the left of the political spectrum, the economic policies that both these parties promote would appear to be anything but that way inclined.

In fact, both appear to unreservedly subscribe to neoliberal economics and to share, as a consequence, doubt about the role of the state within the economy while sharing a belief that markets should decide how the resources within our society are allocated. Try as I might, I can see little between their leaderships on this issue.

In that case, the fact that neither of these parties’ leaderships can explain what they claim to be their core beliefs, while both promote a political-economic philosophy that is alien even to their memberships, does create quite reasonable confusion among many people, who then claim that there is nothing to choose between them.

Democracy can only exist if choices are offered by those in politics to those who might vote for them. Otherwise, democracy is meaningless. Unfortunately, whatever the day-to-day bluster might be at present, it would seem that many of the core offerings of Labour and the SNP, particularly when it comes to economic management, are remarkably similar, small details apart, over which they squabble as a consequence. This does not serve Scotland well.

What this also suggests is that unless either of these parties are able to develop a compelling narrative to underpin their political offering very soon, then the people of Scotland will be presented with a terrible choice at the next Holyrood elections in 2026.

Two years is a remarkably short period of time over which to develop such a narrative and then persuade people that it is embedded in the psyche of the party. If either party succeeds, they can sweep the board in 2026. If, as I fear is more likely, both fail, then the state of Scottish democracy will fall to new depths, and that will not be good for anyone.

We really do need politics with a difference. We’re not getting it right now.