Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

When we scrape away all the pomp, the ceremony and the pageantry of yesterday, there is a consensus—on the Opposition Benches at least, if it has not yet dawned on the Conservative side—that this is a decaying Government who are not really governing. Rather, they are presiding over a country in decline. That is evidenced by the acres of empty green Benches on the Government side of the House. Our job is to be unconvinced by the Government, but the Conservatives are so unconvinced by their own legislative agenda that only one Back Bencher has joined them for this part of the debate—the best part, if I say so myself, since I got to my feet.

This Government are defined by chaos and falling from crisis to crisis, and my constituents certainly cannot wait to see the back of them. They are completely unfit for the challenges that all our constituents face today. They have no clue, I believe, about the scale of the challenge and no comprehension of what is required to meet the social, economic, political and global insecurities that rip through communities up and down the country.

We could have had a King’s Speech rooted in prosperity, rooted in resilience, rooted in that word that the Conservatives love to use: aspiration. We could have had a King’s Speech about tackling the big challenges of our time and seeking consensus for the long-term structural changes needed to take on those policy challenges, whether they be improving living standards, which our constituents are desperately crying out for—our living standards are falling massively behind those of our western European counterparts, and the Government do not even seem to recognise that, never mind have a plan to deal with it properly—or our decaying national infrastructure and public services. The Conservatives have managed to turn climate change into a culture war issue, with all kinds of nonsense on the issue of the net zero transition coming not just from some junior Parliamentary Private Secretary, but from the Prime Minister himself. Look at global affairs and international security.

All those challenges require a sensible, level-headed approach, but we have a Government who know their days are numbered and are rushing to an imaginary constituency based on about 500 people in the constituency of the previous Prime Minister but one, where even opposition to clean air zones will set and define their governing and political strategy. It hardly instils any confidence when we see the Prime Minister—quite correctly—trying to form a global coalition to deal with things such as the regulation of artificial intelligence, but using that summit as an audition for a job back in California. In the Bills set out in the King’s Speech, many of which are old announcements simply being re-announced, we see a poverty of ambition that my constituents certainly cannot afford.

I know that this is the great unspoken iron-clad consensus between the two main parties in this Chamber, but we also have not seen a plan to deal with the damage of Brexit. That is an issue that will not even speak its name, but it has damaged us—it has damaged our standing internationally, it has damaged our economy, and it has damaged the country’s reputation with our closest neighbours in Europe. We have not even started to think about the huge project of rebuilding and strategic redesign of the public realm, public services and national institutions needed post-pandemic. Nobody talks about “building back better” any longer—it has almost been erased from the public consciousness and public debate—yet we know that that is exactly what will be needed.

And yes, many colleagues on both sides of the House have said much that I agree with in terms standing up for the international rules-based order, which is massively challenged by a war in Europe right now, and, of course, by the situation between Israel and Gaza. If someone calls for a ceasefire to that conflict, they are somehow labelled an extremist, and we have a Home Secretary who wants to turn it into a culture war issue by describing those protesting for a ceasefire as taking part in “hate marches”. Are we to believe that the Home Secretary—one of the great offices of state—really believed that tens of thousands of antisemites marched through the streets of London, and her response was to write an open letter? Her position would be untenable if that were actually the case. But so radicalised and desperate to lead her party has she become—presumably when they are on the Opposition Benches—and so weak is the Prime Minister in not reining her in, never mind thinking about sacking her, that this is the position of the Conservative party today.

I am not a conservative, but we need a Conservative party that is at least rooted in the real world. There are many good Conservative Members, some of whom I have personal friendships with, and there might even be one or two here right now—let us not overstate it, mind you—but I say to them: “Take your party back from this madness, because it drags the entire political country into the sewer, and we all deserve much better than that.” All this nonsense about homelessness being a “lifestyle choice”, and wanting to attack charity workers who hand out tents to give people a semblance of shelter from the rain and the cold. What is this rubbish? They have the cheek to call themselves Conservatives, but they have contempt for institutions, contempt for the law, contempt for norms. Conserve what exactly? A Conservative party utterly unrecognisable to its own traditions—many of which are fine; many of which I do not agree with—and massively out of control. Think of the challenges we face—climate change, technology, ageing populations and all the rest of it—and the institutions we need in order to meet those challenges. In, I think, a report for a think-tank, the former Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill said recently that Palmerston would recognise many of the institutions that exist on Whitehall today.

This month marks 25 years since the passing and signing of the Scotland Act 1998 that established the Scottish Parliament—an institution that the Government detest with every fibre of their being. It has increasingly become a Parliament that is about mitigating the worst excesses of the Government’s agenda and policies over many, many years. I do not want a Parliament of mitigation; I want a Parliament of aspiration. Scotland can only become prosperous, fair and resilient, and its aspirations can only really be realised, when it becomes independent and is back in the European Union.