Working people paying price of SNP failure - Ian Murray

​Next week, around 50 miles away from Edinburgh, the residents of Rutherglen and Hamilton West will be heading to the polls to replace their disgraced ex-SNP MP, Margaret Ferrier.

Striking school staff held a rally in Glasgow on Tuesday

The SNP strategy seems to be to distance the party from the 16 years it has spent in government, overlooking its active role in Scotland’s economic decline and public service failings.

Not a single institution or service is stronger now than when the SNP took office, and its working people who are paying the price. And it’s hard to avoid the misery caused by SNP mismanagement this week as schools have been forced to shut their doors again.

In Edinburgh, every single school closed because of Humza Yousaf’s failure to help negotiate a good enough pay deal for vital non-teaching staff. Out of the country in the days leading up to the strike, his last-minute appeal to Unison to call off the strike carried no credibility given his failure to get involved until that moment.

Meanwhile, SNP activists have been launching disgraceful personal attacks on a Unison official, copying straight from the Tories’ anti-union playbook. There are countless reasons behind the mountain of Scottish government failures, with the party’s obsession with the constitution distracting ministers from real priorities, but the principal issue is the SNP’s failure to properly fund local government over many years – long before Covid and the current economic downturn.

In fact, during the good times the nationalists didn’t pass on the extra resources available to councils, and during the bad times they passed on deeper cuts than even the Tories. As Labour’s COSLA leader David Ross said: “Years of savage SNP cuts to councils and slow pay rises will not be solved by yet another eleventh hour offer from the SNP government. The negotiation process must be reformed so Scotland’s local authorities are not left lurching from crisis to crisis.”

This disruption could have been avoided months ago and the hints are that any new offers for teachers will have to be partly funded by money earmarked for the most disadvantaged pupils.

The schools crisis has been building since February, when the First Minister was urged to get involved. His refusal to do so means workers are now being hit in the pocket in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and hard-working families are being inconvenienced by school closures.

Unison is fighting for some of the lowest paid council employees such as janitors, cleaners, nursery staff and support workers. This is not about party politics as some would claim – and those alleging this have no understanding of how trade unions work.

The workers know that the buck stops with the government – whichever party is in charge. And right now, despite the usual attempts to blame Westminster, that’s the SNP.

Working people are right to demand better. Scots have been left out in the cold by two incompetent governments, one that is obsessed with the constitution and another waging poisonous culture wars – neither focussed on governing.

Scotland doesn’t have to settle for more of the same from the complacent, sleaze-ridden SNP or the morally bankrupt Tories. We desperately need governments that will commit to funding vital local services and work constructively with councils and unions to deliver fair pay. The only party offering that alternative is Labour.

Ian Murray is Labour MP for Edinburgh South and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland