Keir Starmer drafts in Gordon Brown to help win back Scottish voters

Sir Keir Starmer today announced he is drafting in Gordon Brown to help the Labour Party reverse its fortunes in Scotland as he pledged the ‘boldest devolution project for a generation’.

The Labour leader used a speech this morning to set out his vision for keeping the UK intact as he tries to head off growing demands for a second independence referendum. 

Sir Keir told Scottish voters that the party will ‘do everything we can to win back your trust in Labour, but equally importantly, in the United Kingdom’. 

Scotland used to be an electoral fortress for the Labour Party but in recent general elections it has been hammered by the SNP. 

Labour believes winning back seats north of the border will be key to Sir Keir’s hopes of securing the keys to 10 Downing Street at the next election. 

The Labour leader said the coronavirus crisis has put ‘rocket boosters’ under the case for the further decentralisation of power away from Westminster. 

He announced the formation of a constitutional commission – advised by former prime minister Mr Brown – to consider how best power, wealth and opportunity can be devolved to the most local level throughout the UK.

At the same time, he set out a ‘fresh and tangible offer’ to the Scottish people in the face of rising support for independence.

He said: ‘It is Labour’s duty to offer a positive alternative to the Scottish people. 

‘To show that you don’t have to choose between a broken status quo and the uncertainty and divisiveness of separatism.

‘Boris Johnson isn’t Britain just as Nicola Sturgeon isn’t Scotland. The United Kingdom is much more than that, more than any individual. 

‘It has been before – and can be again – a great force for social justice, for security and for solidarity.

‘And under my leadership, we will do everything we can to win back your trust in Labour, but equally importantly, in the United Kingdom.’

He also stressed that the devolution project will apply wider than just to Scotland to address ‘a yearning across the United Kingdom for politics and power to be much closer to people’.

‘This won’t be an exercise in shifting power from one Parliament to another, of moving a few jobs out of London or to “devolve and to forget”,’ he said.

‘This will be the boldest project Labour has embarked on for a generation and every bit as bold and radical as the programme of devolution that Labour delivered in the 1990s and 2000s.’

He accused the Government of using the pandemic to pit different parts of the country against each other when ministers should be striving to bring them together.

‘The case for the next phase of devolution was urgent before Covid, but the pandemic has put rocket boosters under it,’ he said.

‘Our Labour council leaders, mayors and metro mayors have stood up for their communities against a centralised Westminster-knows-best response.

‘But too often the UK Government’s approach has been to pit council against council, town against town, city against city, mayor against mayor.

‘It’s no surprise that the many local leaders I’ve spoken to have felt distanced and ignored on decisions that have had huge consequences on people’s jobs, lives and their communities.’ 

Numerous opinion polls in recent months have shown there is now a majority of support for independence in Scotland. 

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has said she wants to hold a re-run of the 2014 border poll after the Holyrood elections next year but Boris Johnson is refusing to grant permission for the vote.  

The SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster Kirsten Oswald dismissed Labour’s plans, saying only full independence could protect Scotland’s interests.

She said: ‘The reality is that the Westminster system is broken and not working for Scotland – and no amount of constitutional tinkering of the kind proposed by Labour will protect Scotland from Brexit or the Tory power grab being imposed upon us against our will.’