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The Labour leader wants to convince Scotland’s ‘squeezed middle’ that he can get everything back under control
‘Starmer should be careful what he wishes for. England might get so carried away with its own devolutionary needs that Scotland begins to feel left out again.’ Photograph: Getty Images
‘Starmer should be careful what he wishes for. England might get so carried away with its own devolutionary needs that Scotland begins to feel left out again.’ Photograph: Getty Images
Thu 24 Dec 2020 04.00 EST
Last modified on Thu 24 Dec 2020 09.18 EST
Engraved on the threshold of the Donald Dewar room in the Scottish parliament is a quote from the Labour party intellectual and MP John Pitcairn Mackintosh: “People in Scotland want a degree of government for themselves. It is not beyond the wit of man to devise institutions to meet those demands.” Few are fortunate enough to be cited so prominently within a gigantic vindication of their argument, but Mackintosh’s early support (he was first elected to parliament in 1966) for political devolution made him a rather isolated figure, especially among his Scottish colleagues in Labour. Where they saw devolution as a form of pandering to territorial grievances, Mackintosh saw an opportunity to relegitimise British politics by handing down power from the centre. The contemporary relevance of his ideas was asserted this week by Keir Starmer, who used the annual JP Mackintosh memorial lecture as a launchpad for his proposals to “win power, and then push as much power as possible away from Westminster”.