Scottish Labour is a fiction, nothing more than a branding
The SNP have urged Anas Sarwar to whip Labour's Scottish MPs to vote against the Government's planned benefits cuts, which the British Government's own analysis estimates will push 250,000 disabled and chronically ill people into poverty, including 50,000 children.
However, disability rights campaign group Disability Rights UK, anti-poverty charity and think tank Trussel, and economics think tank WPI Economics all calculate that the Government's analysis significantly underestimates the number of disabled people who will be pushed into poverty as a consequence of these cuts. They believe that the true number is in excess of 400,000.
Thousands of disabled people are expected to lose their entitlement to Personal Independence Payment (PIP), the main benefit for disabled people in England and Wales, under Labour's plan to change the eligibility criteria for the benefit. The plan will introduce a new eligibility requirement which will mean that only those who score a minimum of four points in at least one activity will be eligible for the daily living component of PIP.
To be eligible for PIP, claimants must score a minimum of eight points assessed on the help they need across a range of daily living activities such as food preparation, bathing and showering, toileting, dressing, eating, and taking medication. Many people make up the eight points by scoring one or two across different categories, but under the new plans only those scoring four in one category will be eligible. If a claimant does not score four in a single category, the points they score in other categories will be discounted. Note that this change does nothing to help disabled people into work, the stated aim of the Government's cuts; it merely reclassifies disabled people as no longer being disabled for the purposes of eligibility for PIP. The needs of disabled people remain the same.
(Image: Stefan Rousseau/PA)
One of the more pernicious effects of this change follows from the fact that PIP is a so-called passport benefit – eligibility for other benefits depends on eligibility for PIP. Carers Allowance is paid to those who care for a disabled person in receipt of PIP, or Attendance Allowance, its equivalent for retired people. If the disabled person loses their eligibility for PIP, eligibility for Carer's Allowance is lost too. Far from providing an incentive to the disabled person to find work, this will make it far more difficult for them to cope with daily living and far more difficult to get into work. Disability campaigners have warned that the cuts will not save the Government money as they will simply force disabled people, whose very real needs remain unchanged, to turn to other services such as the already over-stretched NHS and adult social services.
Any politician with a social conscience or a basic understanding of disability should vigorously oppose these harmful and damaging cuts, but with the honourable exception of Alloa and Grangemouth MP Brian Leishman, Labour's Scottish contingent in Westminster are a supine bunch of careerists whose contribution to Commons debates consists of attacking the Scottish Government on devolved issues.
Of course Anas Sarwar, the nominal leader of the Labour party in Scotland, should instruct Labour's Scottish MPs to vote against these cruel and counterproductive cuts, but he won't, because he too is a supine careerist, installed in his current job by the right wing of the Labour party precisely because he'd do Keir Starmer's bidding. Sarwar defends the cuts, because he believes what Starmer tells him to believe.
But even if Sarwar finds a backbone and opposes the cuts, he has no authority over Labour's Scottish MPs in Westminster and no means of enforcing how they vote in the Commons. "Scottish Labour" is a political fiction, nothing more than a branding exercise. Labour MPs elected in Scotland are subject to the UK Labour whip. They do not constitute a cohesive voting bloc in the Commons. They are part and parcel of the UK Parliamentary Labour Party. Anas Sarwar couldn't whip up a cream cake, never mind Labour's Scottish MPs.
At First Minister's Questions today, John Swinney tore into Sarwar's attacks on him as "the performance of a weak man" after asking two rather desultory questions about Alexander Dennis moving bus production to England and suggesting that Swinney's leadership was under threat. Sarwar accused Swinney of pressing the "big panic independence button" to "save his skin", after the First Minister made a speech on his desire for self-determination this week.
(Image: Andrew Milligan)
Swinney retorted: "Isn't it interesting that Mr Sarwar's interest in the workers of Alexander Dennis lasted two questions and then he gets on to his usual posturing in this Parliament of little substance that is before us.
Israel discovers war crimes
Meanwhile, Israel has suddenly discovered that launching missiles into hospitals is a war crime after an Iranian missile struck a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Be'er Sheva. Iranian state media has claimed that the missile targeted a military site next to the hospital and not the medical facility itself.
Israel's deputy foreign affairs minister Sharren Haskel has called Iran's strike on the hospital "deliberate" and "criminal", while the Israeli health minister Uriel Buso said it was a war crime. But apparently, it's perfectly fine for Israel to bomb hospitals in Gaza on the supposed grounds that they are targeting Hamas operations in or near the hospital.
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