Only the SNP can end the Tories’ shadow of misery over Scotland

by the SNP
Posted on
11 months ago
4 min read

With the next general election looming, it’s clear that this hard-right, post-truth Conservative UK government desperately needs removed from office.

And in Scotland, it’s only the SNP that can defeat the Tories once and for all.

Read on to learn how – whatever happens – it’s only the SNP offering a route out of the Conservatives’ broken, Brexit Britain.

The SNP are a close second to the Tories in each of the six constituencies they hold

In Tory seats, it’s the SNP leading the fight

The Conservatives currently hold seven constituencies across Scotland.

And on every issue from Scotland’s constitutional question to the cost-of-living crisis to the transition to net zero – these seven MPs have been missing in action.

The Conservatives previously held thirteen Scottish seats after the 2017 election, amidst the chaos of the Brexit aftermath.

The SNP campaigned hard in 2019 to reduce their influence – thirteen Tory MPs silencing Scotland’s voice in Westminster is thirteen too many.

On election night the SNP scored a thumping victory, more than halving the Tories’ representation. But there is still further to go.

The Tories in Scotland have slim majorities in each of the seats they hold – unsurprising given the misery they have inflicted on the communities they represent, and the communities across the country.

And the SNP are second place in every Tory seat.

By voting SNP, voters can ensure that the Tories are finished in Scotland at the next election.

Scotland gets what England wants

The difficult truth is that if every single person in Scotland voted Labour as a means of ousting the Conservatives, it still wouldn’t guarantee an end to Tory government.

If the Tories win in England, then Scotland will get a Tory government all the same.

Scotland hasn’t voted for the Conservatives since 1955. And yet, it has lived under Conservative governments for more than half the time since then.

In ten elections since 1959, Scotland hasn’t got the government it voted for.

So to vote Labour, to keep the Tories out, doesn’t make sense.

The SNP has proven time and time again since 2015 that it can be a better opposition to the Tories than Labour ever was, and that we can and will form progressive alliances with other parties to remove the Tories from power and secure the best deal for Scotland.

Only the SNP oppose the Tories’ toxic policies

The whole point in voting Labour used to be to stand against Tory policies. But Labour is now closer to the austerity economics of Cameron and Osborne than it is to the moderate centre-left. Under Jeremy Corbyn, the party was dominated by scandal, in-fighting and in a state of electoral freefall, failing the people it sought to represent. Under Starmer, Labour has become so much worse.

The party has u-turned on its support for free tuition, abolishing the lords and investing in a Just Transition. It has junked proposals to abolish the damaging Universal Credit system, the two child cap, the bedroom tax and the infamous rape clause. Starmer’s Labour has embraced Tory spending policies and is known only for backtracking on everything it has promised the public so far.

That begs the question; why vote Labour if they will only pledge more of the same? What is even the point in the Labour Party if it proposes Tory policies with a red tie?

The SNP will be needed at Westminster to argue for Scotland’s interests against a toxic Tory government and a Labour leader whose only known character trait is his capacity to u-turn. To truly oppose the Tories’ shameful legacy – and all the damage they have yet to do – only the SNP are up to the job of standing up for the values Scotland believes in.

The Tories leave behind a shameful legacy

When the time comes, historians will look incredulously at the Tories time in office.

They wasted their time in government on divisive, incompetent and ill-conceived policies; they tore themselves apart over the disaster of Brexit; and they implemented an agenda that flattened economic growth while crushing living standards.

They have no major achievements – no landmark infrastructure projects or lasting success in our public services.

They have not offered our society anything resembling a better, brighter future.

They have failed in nearly every project they have undertaken.

The best we can say of this rotten Tory government, after 13 long, painful years, is that they have managed Britain’s steep decline. A decline of their own design.

The UK is heading into an election which will be the culmination of years of Tory divisive rhetoric, more than a decade of scandal and erosion of public standards.

If there was ever a time to kick out this incompetent Tory government, it is now.