'Keir Starmer's platitudes are not good enough' - Readers' Letters

Sir Keir Starmer’s long-winded 90-minute speech must have been written by a focus group as it was full of platitudes (Ian Murray, News, 30 September). Labour backed the shambolic Brexit deal and under Sir Keir they are giving up on freedom of movement or returning to the single market far less re-join the EU

Sir Keir Starmer’s keynote conference speech has come in for criticism

Starmer's platitudes are not good enough

Sir Keir Starmer’s long-winded 90-minute speech must have been written by a focus group as it was full of platitudes (Ian Murray, News, 30 September). Labour backed the shambolic Brexit deal and under Sir Keir they are giving up on freedom of movement or returning to the single market far less re-join the EU.

Starmer insulted Scottish voters by saying Gordon Brown will settle the Union debate while rejecting the Scottish Government’s democratic mandate to give the people of Scotland a choice on our future.

Sir Keir Starmer's keynote conference speech has come in for criticism

Labour hasn’t moved on from Gordon Brown’s “British jobs for British workers” or their “Controls on Immigration” mugs yet Anas Sarwar has the nerve to claim that the SNP would not be a progressive ally.

Even if Labour won every seat back from the SNP the Tories would still have an 80-seat majority, which will likely increase to 90 when the new boundary changes come into force.

Labour’s ambition for Scotland is to keep asking any Scottish government, which has very limited fiscal powers, to mitigate Tory policies, rather than campaigning for an independent progressive Scotland in Europe.

With our vast natural resources, there is no reason why we can’t match Denmark’s standard of living rather than being shackled to the most unequal country in western Europe.

Fraser Grant, Edinburgh

Keir’s Red Tories won’t win Scotland

Scotland’s lone Labour MP claims “Scotland is back at the forefront of the Labour Party.” Sorry to break this to you, Ian, but it’s going to take more than Sir Keir’s Red Tories to win back Scotland.

Scotland rejected Brexit. Labour supported Boris’ hard Brexit, which is delivering food and labour shortages, soaring energy and food prices and unemployment.

Scotland possesses the vast majority of the UK’s energy yet Scots pay the highest charges. Labour no longer supports bringing public services back into public ownership but is happy to have given away Scotland’s oil wealth to companies that receive more money from the government than they pay in taxes. Scotland has a proportional voting system yet remains dominated by Westminster. Labour blocked a members’ motion for a proportional voting system, guaranteeing UK minority rule.

Like the Tories, Labour isn’t interested in democracy but power. Sir Keir knows he won’t win middle England with a radical agenda and the right-wing media will take down a progressive Labour leader. Under Labour, the UK will remain at the bottom of Europe on productivity, debt, GDP, pensions, poverty and inequality. Labour won’t deliver anything for Scotland.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh

Is the tourism tide turning on turbines?

Following on from my letter of 30 September concerning the effect of wind turbines on tourism, it is ironic there was also an article that makes me think that Visit Scotland might have finally realised they might have a problem: "Tourists urged to embrace ‘slow travel’ in new Scotland campaign."

It seems they want to discourage whistlestop tours round Scotland and encourage stays in one place. Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) used to produce a wind farm footprint map. It was 19.9 per cent in 2008 and had doubled to 45.9 per cent in 2013. The exercise then stopped. Would it not be sensible to produce another one now?

Celia Hobbs, Penicuik, Midlothian