COLIN CAMPBELL: Labour ramming through winter fuel payment move was either ignorance or just not caring
On the week of the 10th anniversary of the 2014 independence referendum, the Courier revealed the kind of detail the SNP has been thirsting for throughout the past decade. Clear evidence was presented of a Westminster government completely ignoring a significant difference between large tracts of Scotland and the south of England, and making a crucial decision which will affect people in this region more than any other part of the UK.
The facts and figures relating to the decision by Chancellor Rachel Reeves to axe the winter fuel payment are grim. In the Highlands over 58,000 pensioners will no longer qualify for the payment - a drop of 88 per cent.
This area suffers the coldest, most severe winters in the UK and as a result elderly people - in terms of transport, isolation, getting out and about and loneliness - face challenges unknown in the south of England. The winter fuel payment was designed to help alleviate genuine hardship. But Reeves and Labour in their announcement from London were either ignorant of the fact or didn't care. They rammed through their cruel move in any case.
When the Tories were ousted by Labour at the general election after 13 years in power the widespread assumption was that the SNP would slump into ongoing decline. The likes of Johnson and Sunak were finally gone and had been replaced by kinder, gentler Labour bringing in a soothing approach more in keeping with the views of the majority of people in Scotland.
But that's not how it's working out. Boris Johnson was cited during his time as Prime Minister as "the best recruiting sergeant the SNP ever had". But a new man with stripes has come along. And Sir Keir Starmer could be even better. If the SNP weren’t themselves in a post-election mess supporters of the Union would have every reason to be very nervous.
• Community callout: You can sign up for our free newsletters sent directly to your inbox each day at 6.30am. We also have our new Nairnshire newsletters which are also free and arrive every Tuesday and Friday at 8am. Sign-up here.
This appalling decision will not be forgotten or forgiven. It will go down in infamy as vividly as the "Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher" slogan coined after the woman who was to become Prime Minister axed the provision of mid-morning milk which had been made available to primary schoolchildren for decades. People of my vintage will recall how, back in the 1960s, around 11am we'd all sup in class from small glass bottles of lovely, refreshing cold milk, handed out from a grey metal crate. This cherished tradition was ended by Thatcher in 1971 and that went down like a bucket of cold sick.
Reeves’ inexplicable and extraordinary winter fuel betrayal is a whole lot worse.
The SNP will rightly bring the winter fuel payment removal to the forefront of the next Holyrood election campaign - only around 18 months away in 2026. They have their own vulnerabilities and crosses to bear but nothing as blatantly, explicitly indefensible as this. If Labour had announced they were going to do this a month before the July election rather than two months after it, many central belt SNP MPs would still be in place. The SNP wipeout wouldn't have happened.
Ten years on from the referendum, people like me aren't going to vote for the SNP and start supporting independence because of one dreadful decision made in London. But it's ironic that after a decade of the SNP trying to manufacture divisive grievances against the "hated Tories" at Westminster, the first thing caring, sharing Labour has done is handed them a genuine cause for deep anger north of the border right onto a plate.
