This destroys Corbyn’s claim that the SNP do nothing about austerity
Last week, we got a bit annoyed by the video put out by Momentum which suggested that it was a disgrace for the Scottish Rail franchise to be awarded to a Dutch company.
It wasn’t that a political group was lying for political gain that we found problematic. What is jarring is that they were lying in order to attack another group that they are politically similar to at a time progressives should be working together. Corbyn and Momentum should be teaming-up with the SNP in order to try to mitigate the damage being caused by Tory austerity and the looming hard Brexit.
Instead, Corbyn’s recent trip to Scotland has shown that he is willing to play dirty and attempt to win at all costs. It’s a turn off for me and I would imagine many Scottish independence supporters who may well otherwise be sympathetic to many of Corbyn’s policies. He is a guy who talks up a new way of doing politics but has demonstrated in the last few days that he is just as adept as New Labour at using the black arts of deception and spin.
Corbyn’s worst use of gross deception was when he talked about the Scottish Government’s record on tackling Tory austerity.
In short, he suggested there wasn’t one.
.@jeremycorbyn says the SNP should use the powers they have got to mitigate “effects of austerity from Westminster” https://t.co/dLVtM1znEx pic.twitter.com/ilrl59XgCE
— BBC Scotland News (@BBCScotlandNews) August 23, 2017
Coybyn is playing the same game here as momentum was playing in the train video.
He is being deceptive to the point you actually begin to doubt he knows anything about Scottish politics.
It is fair to say that the SNP could potentially do more on austerity mitigation. I know a lot of independence supporters would like to see them raise income tax for higher earners and reform the council tax system. Yet, to say they have not used their powers at all is miles from the actual truth of what has gone on over the last few years. The SNP have done far more than any other party in the UK to mitigate the worst excesses of Tory austerity.
I was going to details this but then I stumbled across the following twitter thread by SNP staffer Gareth Quinn. It details just how far off the mark Corbyn was in his comments. Check it out and let us know what you think below.
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That about sums it up mate. Corbyn wants labour seats in Scotland and most of the winnable ones for them are held by the SNP. That’s fair enough but it goes further than that because he refuses to challenge the tories here. In Scotland the priority for the labour party is the union because he knows the state British state benefits from Scotland’s resources, military, taxes etc That he realises this fact has been obvious for a few years now. He wants to be prime minister and he knows the UK would be diminished by the loss of Scotland. The… Read more »
..amd trumpeting their achievements