Ignorant Starmer’s inability to understand Scotland is turning the SNP into titanium

FOR many people Keir Starmer’s “island of strangers” speech evoked the one which, in 1968, lost Enoch Powell his position in Edward Heath’s shadow cabinet. The echoes are unmistakable. You can argue over the wider context; but the rhythm and the cadence of that phrase, and the hitching of it to the words “incalculable damage,” riff on the apocalyptic future which Powell foresaw, and which his Reform Party descendants are now trading on. Either the Prime Minister deployed it wilfully — a little hate grenade tossed into our already volatile political landscape — or he was ignorant of its historical antecedents. Neither of these possibilities is reassuring. And yet, when I listened to him, it wasn’t the words “Rivers of Blood” that coursed through my mind; it was: “These are our Neighbours”. This was the slogan chanted by the crowds who — four years ago last Tuesday — stood firm against the dawn raid on Kenmure Street in East Pollokshields. The protesters who blocked the immigration van didn’t stop to ask how much English the men inside spoke, or to demand a breakdown of their qualifications. Rather, they embraced them as part of their community. They understood that their value lay, not in their potential as future cogs in Scotland’s labour force, or as contributors to its economy; but in their shared humanity.You can make too much of this. What happened in East Pollokshields was real, but such solidarity is not universal, as I found out covering the Glasgow South West constituency during last year’s General Election. At a fish tea five miles away in Pollok, I heard residents accuse migrants of taking all the best houses in terms reminiscent of the famous “That Foreigner Wants Your Cookie” cartoon.Still, as Starmer knows only too well, messaging matters. The Kenmure Street protest matters, not only because two men who would have been deported were not, but because it sets a tone. There may be racists north of the border, just as there are to its south. But it is nigh-on impossible to conceive of a First Minister making a speech like Starmer’s. This is not only because Scotland has fewer immigrants, but because — as a nation — we see ourselves as tolerant and enlightened. Inclusivity is our brand: the way we sell ourselves to others. Like most brands, it is glossy and exaggerated. But a vision that seeks to unite must be better than a vision that seeks to divide; one that smooths tensions, must be better than one that aggravates them.I say “nigh-on” impossible because we live in “interesting” times. Many of the people at that fish tea in Pollok were in the process of switching from SNP to Scottish Labour. A few weeks later, the SNP incumbent Chris Stephens was ousted in the latter party’s Glasgow rout. But even then, Reform was on the rise, plundering votes from the Tories, its candidates holding on to deposits despite campaigning so little their existence was called into question. And now? Now they’re plundering votes from Scottish Labour. On Thursday night, they took second place to the SNP in the Clydebank waterfront council by-election. A recent Survation poll suggested they would also take second place in next year’s Holyrood election, becoming the main opposition.Perhaps the Pollok fish tea eaters are amongst those who are harking to Reform’s call. It’s people like them Starmer is courting with his “islands of strangers” speech. He isn’t wrong to try to win them back. A quick look around the UK’s most deprived areas tells you the people who live there have good reason to feel betrayed, though migrants are not to blame. One tactic would be to adopt policies that directly address their problems. They could, for example, lift the two-child benefit cap, as anti-poverty campaigners have been demanding ever since they were elected. Instead, they have chosen to stoke those voters’ sense of grievance; to play the game by Reform’s rules instead of setting their own agenda. Whatever the issue - small boats in the Channel, grooming gangs, the country’s lack of skilled workers - there Starmer is parroting Reform’s rhetoric. Every day, he seems to up the ante. If it’s not doubling the time period required to earn settled status, it’s promising to create “return hubs” in countries such as Albania. In doing so, he risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy: a UK divided not by immigration itself but by its weaponisation. And what is he gaining by this strategy? Less than nothing because those attracted to Nigel Farage don’t believe Starmer is sincere, and those disgusted by Nigel Farage are doubly disgusted by Starmer’s attempts to impersonate him. Last week, the Prime Minister’s net favourability rating sank to -46: his worst ever recorded by YouGov.As we have seen, less than a year after Scottish Labour’s supposed return from the wilderness, Starmer has scuppered Anas Sarwar’s shot at power. It is interesting to see that — though immigration is in the mix — in Scotland Reform has chosen to focus on other Culture War issues: the safer drug consumption room, for example, and gender ideology. Perhaps Farage gets us better than Starmer does; perhaps he realises the anti-migrant hate-talk won’t fly quite as well up here.The Labour leader’s inability to understand the country is turning the SNP into titanium. No matter how often the party self-sabotages — through internecine warfare, the fraud investigation or the recent Supreme Court debacle — the votes keep on coming, to the point that it seems destined to continue as the largest party after the election. The same Survation poll predicts it will have 58 seats - seven short of a majority, but more than could have been predicted in July. This despite the fact that many of the SNP’s most experienced MSPs are stepping down. It cannot be good for the country that a party on its knees after 18 years in power keeps being reelected for want of a better option. But at least the SNP isn’t contorting itself into an alien position, which is why it’s losing fewer votes to the new pretenders. The party is also marginally more outspoken about the genocide in Gaza than Labour, whose silence is tantamount to complicity, and a major source of shame. Another question: what impact will Labour’s obsession with emulating its right-wing nemesis have on support for independence? It’s tricky because, on the one hand, Scottish politics is in stasis. Where is the forward-thinking charismatic leader from any party capable of leading the country into a bright new dawn? And yet: how long can those of us allergic to successive UK leaders’ diet of demonisation put up with it being shoved down our throats? A recent independence poll which put Yes 11 points ahead would seem to be an outlier, but it certainly feels as if a party which pitched itself as the saviour of the Union is pushing the country closer to the brink.Either way, you have to wonder how and where all this will end. Starmer chose to make his speech at a time when migrants are being othered across the world and his words are part of a continuum. What starts with: “Why *shouldn’t* they be expected to learn English?” leads to Donald Trump and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement rounding up ordinary people and packing them off to El Salvadorean camps.The rise of Reform presents a clear and present danger. But it doesn’t have to be tackled the Labour way. As I was working on this piece, representatives of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths wrote an open letter urging the Prime Minister to use more compassionate language. Twenty five men and women from different cultures came together to change the prevailing narrative. They showed us what Britain has the potential to be: not an “island of strangers, but a rich tapestry of interconnectedness.

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