Viceroy Murray is 'rolling up his sleeves' to screw Scotland
An edited version was published in the July 20th edition of the Edinburgh Evening News. They cut the last sentence and refused to refer to Ian Murray as the ‘Viceroy.’ Also published in The National, July 19th, in full.
Viceroy Murray is “rolling up his sleeves,” but not to help Scotland. The speech delivered by an English King dripping in diamonds offered Scotland nothing.
GB Energy and the National Wealth Fund are private equity heists designed to funnel money to the City of London, the world’s dirty money laundering capital. GB Energy will shovel Scotland’s North Sea oil revenues into Westminster’s yawning maw. It won’t lower prices or create jobs. Only renationalising energy and introducing regional electricity pricing would. The UK has the only fully privatised energy sector in Europe and the highest prices (ditto for water, apart from Scotland, and rail).
But English Labour won’t do this because then Scots would pay the lowest electricity prices in Europe, and the Viceroy can’t have that!
English Labour’s real priorities lie elsewhere. Starmer flew to Washington to visit the dementia patient, promising the UK would ratchet up defence spending to 2.5% of GDP (£8b more by 2030), appeasing the baying wolves in the military industrial complex. Foreign Secretary Lammy flew to Tel Aviv to schmooze with war criminal Netanyahu, promising to block the ICC arrest warrants for Gallant and Bibi, and pledging further support for genocide.
Most heinous of all, English Labour won’t lift a finger to help 4.2 million children living in poverty. It’s creating a task force to kick this uncomfortable can down the road rather than spend the money to lift these kids out of misery. Ending the 2 child benefit cap would cost just £1.7b. Cabinet minister Pat McFadden even claimed it was ‘up for debate’ whether child poverty is harmful. So, Scotland must continue to mitigate from its limited-by-Westminster budget, taking money from the NHS.
The way out of this neoliberal nightmare is to end this 317-year-old faux union and once again govern ourselves.