Ian Murray MP: We have had 12 years of a government totally out of touch with working people.

As of Tuesday morning, the United Kingdom has a new Prime Minister

Prime Minister Liz Truss departs 10 Downing Street, Westminster, London, to attend her first Prime Minister's Questions at the Houses of Parliament. Picture date: Wednesday September 7, 2022. Picture: Press Association

Liz Truss, a woman principally known for giving a rather strange conference speech about cheese, is the new occupant of 10 Downing Street.

But you wouldn’t know there’s been a change – it’s the same old, tired Tory government.

Sitting on the front bench during yesterday’s exchange at Prime Minister’s Questions, I watched Liz Truss stand up not for hard-working people in Edinburgh or elsewhere, but for the excess profits of oil and gas giants.

I’m afraid there is nothing new about that. We have had 12 years of a government totally out of touch with working people.

You don’t need me to tell you that the energy crisis that has engulfed the country needs urgent action.

After Boris Johnson’s extended holiday, punctured only by self-satisfying hints at returning to a job he hadn’t left yet, it seems Truss is finally willing to act.

Labour has for months now demanded a windfall tax on the oil and gas giants to pay for a total freeze in consumer’s energy bills.

If we were in government, families would know that they wouldn’t be paying a penny extra in their energy bills this winter.

We don’t yet know exactly what Truss will do, but we do know who’s going to be paying for it.

You.

Hard-working families across Britain will be footing the bill for a crisis not of our making.

Every penny her government refuses to raise in windfall taxes is money that they will be loading onto you for years to come.

At the same time, the Treasury estimates giant oil corporations will be making £170Bn in excess profits. Profits driven by this crisis from your pocket to theirs.

That’s almost equivalent to entire GDP of Scotland, pocketed by billionaire shareholders while millions fall into fuel poverty.

The profits are so large, the CEO of BP described the sector as ‘a cash machine’.

Well, under Labour’s plans, the oil giants would be using their cash card to hand money back to struggling households.

It’s this approach which I think goes to the heart of the divide on offer at the next election

Because it’s not going to be, as Nicola Sturgeon wants to pretend, a referendum on independence.

It is going to be a choice between Liz Truss and her tired government, or Keir Starmer and a Labour government on the side of hard-working Scots.

We can unlock the potential of our country, creating an economy that doesn’t force people to choose between heating and eating.

But instead, an economy of good quality, high paying jobs.

It’s something a Labour Scottish Government would deliver too, and we’ve seen in recent weeks just how much that’s needed.

Last week, a report by the Scottish Fiscal Commission said the Scottish economy is projected to grow more slowly than the rest of the UK for the next 50 years.

That’s the reality of an SNP government that has spent 14 years in office more interested in political grievance than jobs.

It’s been a week of surface level change in politics.

A new face at the top of British politics, but the same old failure underneath.

There’s been a shuffling of deck chairs on the Titanic, but the ship long since hit the iceberg.