ELINO - one cheek of the same backside

English Labour in Name Only

Published by the Edinburgh Evening News on March 4th, 2024. They edited out “the shutdown will complete the deindustrialisation of the UK’s last colony” as well as the last three paragraphs. However, The National published it in full. How I long for an independent Scottish press!!

Ian Murray’s English Labour in Name Only (ELINO) party promises a “new deal for working people in the first 100 days in office.”

Given Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer’s self-imposed spending freeze strait jacket, ELINO says the funding for the ‘new deal’ will come from scrapping non-dom tax status and a 3% windfall tax hike on private Big Oil to fund English nuclear power plants. To say that’s underwhelming is an understatement.

Meanwhile, ELINO won’t commit to saving Scotland’s Grangemouth refinery. It’s scheduled to close next year with a loss of up to 500 jobs and will leave Scotland, a major oil producer, without a refinery. Once it closes, emissions will skyrocket since oil will need to be tankered out and then shipped back in. One supertanker guzzles 380 tons of diesel per day.

Grangemouth’s demise is happening while Scottish North Sea oil revenues soar to £17.2 billion. Yet the UK Government won’t spend the £60-80 million needed to restart the Grangemouth hydrocracker which would increase refinery profitability threefold.  The shutdown will complete the deindustrialisation of the UK’s last colony and increase Scotland’s dependence on English refineries.

Interestingly, the UK Government has managed to find £600 million to guarantee Grangemouth owner and tax exile Jim Ratcliffe’s latest scheme, to build Europe’s largest petrochemical plant in Antwerp. The behemoth will churn out plastics on an unprecedented scale and has been dubbed a ‘carbon bomb’ by campaigners.    

Murray proclaims ‘we urgently need change.’ But ELINO, is just one cheek of the same backside. Both English parties are intent on keeping Scotland trapped in a faux union whose only purpose is to plunder Scottish resources.  

The sovereign Scottish People must take their country back. The politicians, if they want to keep their jobs, will have to follow along.