Stop The War - 09 - George Galloway © by DavidMartynHunt
People in England will be worse off if Scotland chooses independence, newly elected Respect MP George Galloway argues in his debut column for Holyrood magazine.
Writing exclusively in the latest issue of Holyrood, out Monday, Galloway also explains his concern that the campaign against independence is beyond the “tubes and empty jaikets” in the Labour party in the Scottish Parliament, calling it “mission impossible.”
Galloway reflects that had he been successful in his bid last May to be elected to the Scottish Parliament he would have been campaigning against this “inch-by-inch to independence”, which he says he has opposed “all my political life”.
If Scotland does choose independence, however, Galloway says working people in England will be “poorer” and the Conservatives will have a monopoly in Government.
“I oppose the split because I don’t believe there’s a difference between a young person in Bradford and one in Barrhead, but the former will be poorer if it happens. With about 60 Scottish Labour MPs removed from the British parliament, working people in England will be poorer as the cuts, which have only just started to bite, tear apart the welfare state. England will forever be Tory. Don’t leave them to that.”
Galloway also heaps praise on First Minister Alex Salmond for transforming the SNP. The party has made an “amazing transformation” under Salmond’s leadership, Galloway says, and members have moved from being “Tartan Tories to left radicals taking principled positions that would have formed large chunks of any Labour manifesto prior to Blair and Brown.”
He adds: “From education to health the Nats shame the party that expelled me – over a war that most of the British public opposed, just like the present one, which has the same level of opposition and which the three big parties unflinchingly support. They call it the ‘mission’ now. For Labour in Scotland it looks like mission impossible.”
The full story is available in the new issue of Holyrood magazine, out Monday. To subscribe to Holyrood click here: http://www.holyrood.com/subscribe
Katie Mackintosh
Katie is Holyrood magazine's Health Correspondent and has been with the magazine since 2005. She has an MA in Sociology with Gender from Edinburgh University and a post graduate diploma in Journalism from Napier University. Katie has twice been named PPA Scotland Feature Writer of the Year, in 2008 and again in 2009, and was shortlisted for magazine writer of the year at the Scottish Press Awards in 2012. She is an Aberdonian by birth, a Glaswegian by nature, who now lives in Fife with her...
With the rate Scottish Labour is impoding the assertion that "about 60 Scottish Labour MPs" will be "removed from the British parliament" is a bit presumptuous. Westminster could become as SNP for Scotland as Holyrood. Buthose representatives would have virtually no say as they'd be overwhelmed by the 3 mainstream parties, all of whom look the same, and all of whom present a united front when it comes to Scotland.
Why should the young person in Barrhead accept being worse off, and having that democratic defecit if he/she has a better alternative? It's like asking an English person to vote in the interests of France, or the EU rather than their own.