Labour leader and certified yoon Keir Starmer has once again confirmed his party would not do a deal with the Scottish National Party (SNP) if there was a hung parliament at the next general election. Even a right-wing LBC hack pointed out that it meant Starmer would rather see the Tories’ “limp on” in government.
Starmer: no SNP deal
As Holyrood reported last year, at the Labour Party conference Starmer said of a possible coalition government or deal with the SNP:
No deal under any circumstances.
The context to this is that the SNP hold the majority of Scottish parliamentary seats in Westminster. Meanwhile, whilst Labour currently lead in the opinion polls, there is a chance that the Tories could eat into this. As Chris Hopkins from pollster Sevanta told HuffPost:
if Rishi Sunak can keep narrowing that Labour lead, point-by-point, the actual results come 2024 could look very different
Sevanta’s most recent polling gave Labour a majority of 314 – leaving the Tories with just 69 seats. However, that’s a big prediction and a long-way off. So, you’d hope Starmer would be putting the good of the public first and making sure we knew all options were on the table to prevent the Tories regaining power in 2024. But no – that’s clearly too much to ask.
Yoon logic
A caller to LBC asked Starmer during an interview with Nick Ferrari if he’d changed his mind on a possible SNP deal if needed. Starmer said again:
We are not doing a deal with the SNP. I say that in capitals, I say it in bold, I said it at my party conference…
Ferrari interrupted, saying:
you’d rather see, somehow, the Conservatives limp-on in some extraordinary hotchpotch deal than you borrowing five-to-ten seats from the SNP and getting over the line?
In short, Starmer said yes – spouting some unionist garbage about being ‘better together’:
Keir Starmer has confirmed he won't do a deal with the SNP even if it means the Tories remaining in power. In other words he'd rather have the Tories in power than do a deal with the SNP to keep them out. pic.twitter.com/0nnfMkP7Wu
— MSM Monitor (@msm_monitor) December 12, 2022
Unsurprisingly, people on social media were unimpressed by Starmer’s comments:
Red Tory stating he'd rather keep the Blue Tories in power is not news.
It's the Blairites all over again.
Red Tories have already thrown millions of us under the bus when they worked with the rest of the Establishment to block Corbyn, a caring & fair socialist getting into gov.— Ange #Organise #JoinAUnion (@Ange_Sandgrown) December 12, 2022
Starmer's centrist crew preferred a Boris Johnson Tory government to a Jeremy Corbyn Labour government and now they are going a step further – they prefer a Tory government to their own Labour government if it needs SNP support https://t.co/eZ4YCj3WRM
— troovus (@troovus) December 13, 2022
Show me you're a tory without actually telling me yer a tory #bewarethewolfinsheepsclothing https://t.co/vxsk245mL4
— Wally Doug
Now, to be moderately fair on Starmer, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also ruled out a deal with the SNP at the 2019 general election – albeit in slightly less forthright terms. However, he seemed more open to ‘indy ref 2’ than Starmer does. So, while it looks like Labour could win the next general election, nothing is set in stone. And for Starmer to already be actively denying the people of Scotland autonomy – as well as saying he’d prefer to throw all of us under the bus than work with the SNP – is nothing short of petulant and arrogant.
Featured image via LBC – YouTube
By Steve Topple
This post was originally published on Canary.
