Tony Blair's recent essay contends that the Labour Party lacks a coherent plan and must adopt a ‘Radical Centre’ agenda to address technological and geopolitical shifts (“‘Labour lacks coherent plan’ says Sir Tony Blair in essay critical of Government”, The Herald, May 27).
He proposes a policy platform focused on pro-business growth, planning reform, energy security, workforce retraining for AI, welfare reform, healthcare modernisation, and tighter immigration controls.
David Hume described the reception of his first book, ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’, by writing that it "fell dead-born from the press".
Without a radical change in our medieval combative political party system, Tony Blair's essay will suffer the same fate as Hume's Treatise.
Doug Clark, Currie, Edinburgh.
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Black mark for Brown
Well done to Neil Mackay for calling out Tony Blair (“Blair isn’t the saviour of Labour, but he will be its undertaker”, The Herald, May 28).
He could now do well to turn his attention to the former Prime Minister’s co-conspirator, Gordon Brown.
Mr Brown gets a relatively good press for his regular ex cathedra pronouncements on the state of the nation, and he has now been given an advisory and ambassadorial role by the current Labour government. However, his record in government bears some attention.
Sir Tony Blair and Mr Brown’s New Labour came to power at a time of an almost unprecedented capitalist economic boom.
And, to be fair, they did some good, with projects such as Sure Start. But, having already abandoned Labour’s historic socialist principles at the behest of Rupert Murdoch and other leaders of the ruling class, they set about further enriching these people instead of championing their core electorate, the working class.
Brown lavished praise on the financial sector, notably through his Mansion House speeches, and held it up as the backbone of the British economy, and rewarded them with deregulation - a license to print money.
For themselves. This blind faith in the financial institutions and the laissez-faire approach to how they conducted their business were significant contributory factors to the financial crisis which followed, and in turn the austerity measures which remain in place to this day.
John Major introduced the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) as a mechanism for lining the pockets of the spivs who headed up certain organisations.
Mr Brown carried this on with enthusiasm. His vanity drove him to present himself as the Chancellor who would rid the UK of debt by not allowing the public sector, particularly local government and the NHS, to borrow money to build schools and hospitals, and to finance all the other capital expenditure so badly needed. Instead he dictated that all of this work should be outsourced to private companies.
They would borrow the money at a significantly higher lever of interest than would have been available to the public bodies, build the schools and hospitals etc, then lease them back at rates which lined their pockets and burdened the public sector with billions of pounds of entirely unnecessary debt over many years, up to today and beyond.
All so he could parade himself, entirely falsely, as the man who sorted the UK’s national finances.
There was also, of course, the deregulation of the betting industry. And selling off the gold reserves. That all went well, didn’t it?
Now we come to the pinnacle of Brown’s achievements, his uncritical support for Blair and Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq. Indeed, as Chancellor, he financed Britain’s role in this catastrophic and criminal misadventure.
Can you imagine the impact Mr Brown could have had, given his standing in the country, if he had adopted the principled position of Robin Cook and others, and stood up publicly and opposed Britain’s involvement.
Now that would have been a legacy to be proud of.
Jim Cameron, Cambuslang.
The blame game
The First Minister seems to think that he and his cohorts have no responsibility for the corporate governance of his party, to thus ensure it is run in accord with the principles of transparency and accountability (“FM ‘satisfied’ with governance of SNP despite Murrell scandal”, The Herald, May 29).
His excuse seems to be “a big boy did it and ran away”. Only this time the big boy was not Westminster, but his own colleague.
Mike Flinn, West Kilbride. Sturgeon’s strange silence NICOLA Sturgeon is one of the handful of Scots to have been our First Minister.
With this power comes a huge responsibility, and I am sure many of us expect our top politicians to conduct themselves to a much higher standard than most. Under these circumstances, is it not a total dereliction of her office for Ms Sturgeon to allegedly only answer "no comment" during the hours of her police interview (“‘Murrell fallout has meant the worst week of my life’”, The Herald, May 29).
Ms Sturgeon was never known for keeping quiet. Why this time?
Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.
The Indy dream?
I spotted the following comment on Facebook: "Nothing says ‘independence’ more than having a mobile home that your wife doesn’t know about.”
Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven.
Basket case Scotland? Not at all
Ian Gray (Letters, May 28) reluctantly agrees that Scottish independence is a lost cause, but asks rhetorically, “if Scotland is such a basket case, and needs the Barnett formula adjustments, why do Westminster governments want to hold onto this little part of Britain, if it costs so much to subsidise?”
The answer, of course, is that Scotland isn’t a basket case. No-one on the pro-UK side ever said it was. And the Barnett allocations aren’t a subsidy.
They’re a means of pooling and sharing within the unitary state that is the United Kingdom, with Scotland’s allocation recognising the geographic and demographic differences in Scotland from, say, Wales or the East Midlands.
The argument against independence isn’t that we ‘couldn’t’ be independent. We could. But given the facts and evidence, we’d be less well off economically and financially.
And less secure militarily, and in other ways, for no discernible gains.
You don’t have to claim Scotland’s a basket case to see the foolishness of pursuing an independence which only makes the people of Scotland poorer and more unsafe.
Alex Gallagher, Largs.
Talking turkey regarding Q Manivannan
If you lie on your CV to get a job, you’re sacked when the lies are revealed. So what will happen to newly elected Green MSP Q Manivannan, a self-styled ‘queer Tamil immigrant’ who allegedly misrepresented his background?
The Scottish Greens oppose private schools. But Q Manivannan attended one in Chennel India, before moving on to Jindal Global University, a fee paying establishment.
Surely Q Manivannan must be expelled by the Greens.
And there must be some way of removing this person from a £77,710 position in the Scottish Parliament.
Perhaps the Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill? Unfortunately this Bill was introduced on December 17, 2024, but fell at Stage 3 of the legislative process, meaning it hasn’t yet become an Act.
The Recall of MPs Act was passed on March 26, 2015. Yet 11 years later the Scottish Parliament still drags its feet. How convenient for MSPs, not to be held accountable.
But, of course, turkeys don't vote for Christmas.
Clark Cross, Linlithgow.
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