Richard Leonard: Time to invest in hope

For a long time, I have firmly believed that politics is not simply made in parliament, but in the homes, the factories and the communities of Scotland.

That’s why I spent August ‘on the road’, travelling the length and breadth of our country doing a mix of public meetings and visits with workers, trade unions, community groups and businesses. And one thing is very clear – Scotland needs change. 

From Stranraer to Shetland and everywhere in between, the effects of a decade of austerity and cuts from both the Conservative and the SNP governments are biting hard.

Nearly every community I visited during the last month is paying a price for the growing crisis in the NHS: from GP surgery cuts to hospital services under threat – action groups are springing up right across the country.

On top of all of this, the economies of too many towns and villages are being hit by the squeeze on working families and declining pay. This is compounded by the growth in the private rented sector, so the number of people living in poverty in the private rented sector has increased by 75 per cent in the last decade. The lack of affordable housing, particularly council and social housing, is a real issue. 

Unsurprisingly, across the country, people want to focus on what matters to them – jobs, health and their quality of life. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a new choice in Scotland and it couldn’t be clearer:  Labour’s plan for investment and creating better jobs.

One in four children in Scotland lives in poverty at a time when the richest one per cent in Scotland own more personal wealth than the poorest 50 per cent put together. That won’t change by redrawing lines on a map; it will only change with a redistribution of wealth and power.

Wealth in Scotland has now surpassed £1 trillion, and the Resolution Foundation warns that it is not being taxed effectively enough. They are right, which is why we will argue that the very richest should pay their fair share and put wealth back to work for the many. 

We need real change, not just more of the same, a more equal Scotland – for higher investment, better public services and where the broadest shoulders bear the biggest burden. 

Scottish Labour is offering people a decade of investment and not another ten years of austerity. Only Labour’s plans provide a transformative investment in Scotland over ten 
years, prioritising health, education, housing, and jobs.

The real divide in Scotland is between the SNP and the Tories planning another decade of austerity and Labour offering a decade of real and sustainable investment in public services and our economy.

Ours is a radical strategy which puts full employment at its heart, ending complacency about real unemployment and ending the age of insecure work. We are also proposing a £10 per hour real living wage, giving around half a million workers in Scotland a pay rise.

We have set out an industrial strategy in which we make the case for more planning and less of a market. The result will be more democracy in our economy, not just when things go wrong but to help things go right in the first place.

I have met older people who have bus passes but there are no local buses, yet the Scottish Government talks about public ownership of bus services in their Transport Bill as a last resort. Well, I think it should be a first resort because I know how successful it has been in Edinburgh with Lothian Buses.

Lothian Buses pays no dividend payments to shareholders, directors’ bonuses or anything like that – everything goes back into the service and for that reason, it is the best in Scotland.

So Scottish Labour’s priorities are to set out new horizons to awaken ideas and to raise consciences to give people hope again.

We want to remove the fear of poverty for good, tackle persistent unemployment by building a full employment economy, tackle climate change, humanity’s greatest challenge, provide decent homes, end rough sleeping, give dignity in retirement to the old, opportunities and new horizons to the young, and bring about a renaissance in public ownership.

by Patrick Harvie

Patrick Harvie: The SNP has grown stale

Winning power may not be far away given the Tories’ shambolic handling of Brexit makes another general election a real possibility – and Scottish Labour is ready to play our role in delivering real change across the whole of the UK.