The dust has settled now on the SNP’s election rout. The predictable platitudes have been uttered and Parliament is in recess. The genocide in Gaza continues, as does UK support for it. What are we to make of the electoral success of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, a party that outspokenly supports Israel? And what are we to make of the increase in the number of people who voted for Labour in Scotland compared with the 2019 election, contrary to the trend across the UK as a whole?
There is a lot to be said about the Scottish election results, but no issue trumps genocide. It cannot be balanced against any merits that might be found in other Labour policies. No one complicit in genocidal actions, either through their own statements or through the Cabinet’s collective responsibulity, is fit for public office.
The weight of an issue doesn’t guarantee that it will register at the vote count. That takes organisation, either the explicit kind or the kind that’s built into media priorities and spin. It’s hard work to turn a single issue into a decisive one but it can be done, as the pro-Brexit lobby demonstrated in 2019. But the Brexiteers began by capturing the Tory party and making it unequivocally the party to “get Brexit done.” The struggle against the Gaza genocide is different. From the beginning it has been a struggle by some of the people against almost all of the professional political apparatus. Continue reading “The Genocide Election” »