Photo: Andrew Milligan Associated Press UK Labor Party leader Keir Starmer at the launch of the party's Scottish election campaign in the city of Glasgow on Friday May 24
Andy Buchanan – Agence France-Presse in Glasgow
Published yesterday at 11:18 a.m. Updated at 12:36 a.m.
- Europe
British Labor leader Keir Starmer sharply criticized separatists in Scotland on Friday, a crucial territory for Labor's hopes of coming to power, where he visited on the second day of the campaign for the legislative elections.
In a good position to become Prime Minister after the July 4 elections, the Labor leader said in Glasgow that the votes of the Scots were “vital » to win him key seats at Westminster, and thus give victory to his party after 14 years of opposition.
Scotland was, until 2010, a largely Labor territory. But the independent Scottish National Party (SNP), positioned on the left, currently controls 43 of the 59 constituencies, compared to only two for Labor and seven for the Conservatives.
Keir Starmer pitted the two parties, the SNP in Edinburgh and the Conservative Party in London, against each other, accusing them of having sowed “chaos and division” in the British province over the past fifteen years.
“Only Labor can put an end to this and turn the page,” he said from the old Labor stronghold.
In May, a Savanta poll showed Labor ahead of the SNP for the first time in years with 37% of voting intentions, compared to 31% for the separatists, fueling Labor's hopes.
“Scotland and the UK desperately need change, they are crying out for it, and Labor is ready,” Anas Sarwar, the party's leader in Scotland, said on Friday.
For its part, the Scottish SNP has had a series of difficulties since the departure of the charismatic former Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon a little over a year ago. The party is the target of a police investigation into its finances, and Ms Sturgeon's successor Humza Yousaf resigned only a few weeks ago.
Labour accuses the SNP of being obsessed with the dream of Scottish independence, to the detriment of the concrete problems of residents, who are suffering from the rising cost of living in the United Kingdom.
Corbyn excluded
The new Prime Minister and leader of the SNP, John Swinney, wanted to assure voters that the independence of this British nation could still be achieved within the next five years, but this project faced firm opposition from London.
The last vote, in 2014, was won by the “no” to independence by 55%, but the separatists argue that Brexit, to which the Scots were mostly opposed, relaunched the debate.
The Prime Minister and Conservative candidate, Rishi Sunak, is traveling to Northern Ireland, where he will complete his express tour of 48 hours within the four British nations.
He insists on the improvement in the economic situation and welcomed the announcement on Friday by the regulator energy that gas and electricity bills would drop this summer.
“The economy has turned a corner”, which proves that “our plan is working”, affirmed Rishi Sunak.
His Labor rival was quick to point out that the annual energy bill for British households still remained much higher than in 2021.
In this nation at the forefront in the development of renewable energies, Keir Starmer also defended his proposal to create a public company in charge of energy management, which he believed would make it possible to reduce bills and strengthen the country's energy independence.
Labor leads the Conservatives by more than 20 points in the latest polls.
But after a crushing defeat in 2019 under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, Labor needs to win back dozens of seats to secure a majority at Westminster.
The former leader of Labor from 2015 to 2020, positioned much further to the left than Keir Starmer, announced his candidacy as an independent on Friday in his historic constituency in London, at the risk of dividing the Labor vote.
Labour, which had already suspended him accusing him of having allowed anti-Semitism to flourish in Labor ranks under his leadership, announced his exclusion immediately.
With Clara Lalanne in London