Holyrood election: a chance to make the case for socialist change

The Holyrood election is taking place amid the death agony for Starmer’s Labour government at Westminster. It is a question of when not if he’s forced out.

As the polls stand, Labour will be annihilated in the parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales, as well as the council elections in England. He is paying the price for a series of brutal anti-working class policies that have resulted in Labour’s ‘mile wide, inch deep’ support evaporate.

Polling also shows the combined vote of Labour and the Tories at a UK level is at less than 40%. Never has the standing of the new main parties been as low. There is massive anger towards the capitalist political establishment among working class communities.

While in Scotland, the SNP are expected to be the largest party after the election, they are also polling at least 13% lower than their support in 2021. That’s a drop of over a quarter in their vote. And no wonder.

The crisis in the NHS continues, council services are being cut to the bone, the self-declared housing crisis goes unresolved and workers are still having to move to strike action to pay and other issues force concessions from the SNP government.

Recent polling by the BBC shows these are the questions that are most concern for people. Asked to name the top three issues affecting Scotland, 62% cited the cost of living, with 52% choosing health, social care and the NHS.

Another 31% said the state of the economy was crucial. And it is precisely on those class questions that the SNP have failed utterly, a result of their cuts-laden budgets and refusal to stand up to Westminster austerity.

Socialist Party Scotland are standing our members in the election to provide an answer to those and other vital questions.

We demand an end to all cuts and for full funding of the NHS, council services and social care. MSPs should be refusing to pass on austerity and fight for the funding our communities need.

The money is there. The rich and big business are raking it in. By taking the wealth off the super-rich through public ownership and democratic planning of the economy, it would be possible to spend billions on reversing the effects of more than a decade of cuts.

As well as building the high quality and affordable council homes required to meet demand.

To resolve the cost of living crisis, we demand pay rises and benefit increases that actually fully matches inflation. As well as the introduction of a £15 an hour minimum wage for all without age exemptions.

Reform

Reform UK are likely to win a number of MSPs. Primarily, this is a result of the mass anger and failures of the main parties, Labour and the SNP in particular.

Yet Reform – who are Tories with even more racist and anti-working class policies – will continue with the cuts agenda. They have pledged to cut benefits for the poorest, “reform” the NHS – which means further cuts and privatisation – and to scrap net zero policies.

The Scottish Greens are riding on a crest of a swell rather than a wave – and moreover one not of their own making.

The ‘Polanski effect’ has had a certain and limited impact in Scotland. While the Green Party in England and Wales has increased its membership by 147,000 in the last six months, the Scottish Greens have added just 2,500.

The recent experience of their cuts coalition with the SNP, which lasted from 2021 to 2024, exposed the desire to work within the limits of capitalism. Another governmental agreement with the SNP after the election in possible if the SNP don’t have a majority.

Independence

In the BBC poll, while just 13% mentioned Scotland being in or out of the UK in their top three issues, support for independence is currently at over 50%.

John Swinney is making independence the key issue in this election, but he is doing so for electoral calculations only. Desperate to shore up falling support for the SNP, they are framing this as an opportunity to elect a majority SNP government who will then demand a referendum from Westminster.

Yet, they have no intention of building the type of mass campaign that is essential to apply real working class pressure on the Labour government.

As with the crises facing public services and the cost of living, socialist policies and mass working-class struggle are essential to resolve the refusal of the capitalist class to deliver a second referendum.

Your Party failures

Against this backdrop, the refusal of Your Party at a UK level to allow an election challenge in Scotland is a disgrace.

It marks a deliberate policy by the grouping who now have control of YP – particularly those around Jeremy Corbyn and the officers group who effectively now control the party.

They have also refused to hand over membership data to Your Party Scotland to allow a democratic selection process of candidates to take place.

The potential to build a mass workers’ party – evident in the 800,000 who gravitated to YP last summer – has been squandered.

It underlines the necessity, as Socialist Party Scotland advocates, of the mass membership trade unions to play a leading role in the building of such a party.

In the interim, our members are standing as part of the Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition for Holyrood.

We are standing a number of trade union and socialist fighters. We will use the election to make the case for an end to all cuts, public ownership, the building of a mass workers’ party and an independent socialist Scotland.

Our candidates and policies

The Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates include trade unionists with a record of leading struggles against cuts and for pay justice – including leaders of the Dundee and Glasgow City UNISON branches, as well as socialists with a long track record of fighting against war and oppression.

Our candidates are:

• Chris Sermanni – Rutherglen and Cambuslang
• Jim McFarlane – Dundee City West
• Donald McLeod – Dundee City East
• Lynda McEwan – Dumbarton
• Sinead Daly – Paisley
• Jim Halfpenny – Renfrewshire North and Cardonald

The need for a socialist election challenge has never been clearer. All the main parties have a records of carrying out cuts to public services and other anti-working class policies.

The 15 core policies that Scottish TUSC candidates will stand on are:

• End all cuts and austerity – elected politicians in councils, Holyrood and Westminster must refuse to make cuts and fight for fully funded NHS, council and social care services
• No coalitions or electoral agreements with parties or independents who have a record of implementing cuts and who refuse to sign up to a no cuts platform
• For a massive programme of council house building to tackle the housing crisis
• Scrap the council tax and for its replacement with a tax on income that make the rich pay
• Increase the minimum wage to an immediate £15 an hour with no age exemptions – wages must rise automatically with inflation
• Abolish all anti-trade union laws
• Stop benefit cuts – benefits must match the cost of living
• Take the wealth off the billionaires – Tax the rich and big business – For public ownership and democratic control of the multinationals that dominate the economy
• End the genocide – End the occupation of Gaza – Build mass struggle for Palestinian rights and an independent Palestinian state
• End the war in the Middle East
• Oppose all forms of racism – Fight for jobs, homes and public services for all – Defend the right to asylum and fight against the onslaught against refugees
• Defend and extend LGBTQ+ and women’s rights
• For socialist change, public ownership and democratic planning to tackle the environmental crisis
• For the right of self-determination for Scotland, including the right of the Scottish parliament to organise a second independence referendum. Fight for an independent socialist Scotland
• All candidates will stand on the pledge, if elected, of only taking the average wage of a skilled worker

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