By Richie Venton, SSP national trade union organiser – abridged version of this article was originally published in the National, 03/03/2026
Events are erupting with dizzying speed, giving people little time to ponder the lessons and consequences.
In two short months we’ve witnessed the imperialist bully Donald Trump kidnap Venezuela’s President; threaten to seize Greenland, its sea-lanes and rare earth metals; and launch a murder mission on Iran.
In collaboration with the genocidal Netanyahu, he has killed innocent children under the pretence of providing democracy to an Iranian population who suffered 26 years of the Shah’s royalist, police-state dictatorship – imposed by Britain and America’s 1953 coup, which overthrew the elected Mosaddegh government, because it nationalised Anglo-Iranian oil (now BP).
This was followed by a theocratic dictatorship that will remain in power despite Khamenei & Co being killed.
Imperialist powers can never give freedom or democracy through war and slaughter; look at Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan.
Trump’s military gangsterism is partially designed to reverse his flagging domestic popularity; distract from revelations of the Epstein class of paedophile financial capitalists; and divert attention from the murder and persecution of US citizens and their new neighbours by Trump’s armed ICE thugs, whose actions have provoked mass strikes, demonstrations and community mobilisations to challenge their dictatorship in Minnesota’s streets and workplaces.
Labour’s Keir Starmer bows and scrapes at the feet of Trump, refusing to utter a single word of criticism of his and Netanyahu’s illegal ‘war of choice’ on Iran, which has catapulted the region towards escalating war, civil wars, economic chaos and mass death.
Starmer boasted British planes were in the air ‘defending our regional allies’ and then provided military bases for the US’s murderous attacks, as he trots out hypocritical cliches about ‘upholding international law’.
Where stands his Scottish branch manager, Anas Sarwar?
He’s aped Starmer’s ill-disguised support for Trump’s imperialist war on Iran.
He has desperately tried to distance himself from Starmer as the Holyrood elections loom, in a piece of rank opportunist theatre, considering he never called for Starmer’s resignation over pensioners’ winter fuel payments, the two-child benefits cap, betrayal of the WASPI women, abject failure to save Grangemouth workers’ jobs, or his active complicity in the Gaza genocide, etc.
Did Sarwar demand Starmer’s resignation after he appointed Epstein’s pal and business associate, Lord Mandelson, as US ambassador? No, Sarwar visited the disgraced ‘Prince of
Darkness’ in Washington last April, joyfully tweeting about being with his “old friend”; by your friends shall ye be known, Anas.
Sarwar’s latest advice to Scotland is to “hold your noses and vote Labour”. Only very small children imagine things disappear because they cover their eyes with their fingers. The stench of corruption, warmongering and austerity cuts will not disappear no matter how many ‘hold their noses’.
Sarwar’s dread of electoral oblivion will have deepened with Labour’s humiliating defeat in the Gorton and Denton by-election, where their vote share literally halved (from 50.8% in 2024 to 25.4%), in an area held by Labour for nearly 100 years.
Labour were hammered by the Greens and beaten into third place by a particularly obnoxious Reform UK candidate – who then echoed Farage’s racist diatribes that the Greens won through ‘family voting’ and by producing leaflets in Urdu… for a section of the population whose first language is, well, Urdu!
Presumably Reform UK will only issue Holyrood election leaflets in Swahili – or maybe German, since Farage’s children are German-speaking – or some other language most of us do not speak, so we don’t understand their real and reactionary policies?
Reform UK policies like keeping zero hours contracts; reinstating the two-child benefits cap; slashing workplace health and safety; privatising the NHS; cutting young workers’ minimum wage; reducing taxes on the obscenely wealthy; creating a version of Trump’s ICE thugs to terrorise and deport people who’ve made Scotland their home, many with children born here?
But what conclusions can be drawn from the Manchester by-election by those of us who want to offer people an alternative to both Labour’s betrayals and the arch-Thatcherite Toryism of Reform UK – five of whose eight MPs are former Tory MPs, including ex-Tory Cabinet members?
The Greens are certainly not a socialist party, and their councillors in England (like Scottish Greens) have a record of repeatedly voting for cuts budgets – as have Scottish Green MSPs, both before and during their coalition with the SNP.
But in Gorton and Denton, they won a phenomenal victory by having a working-class candidate – Hannah Spencer, a local plumber – talking the language of working-class people on the cost-of-living, defence of our NHS, denouncing people being bled dry by billionaires who influence other political parties, and for community unity against racist divisions.
Like Plaid Cymru in last October’s Caerphilly by-election – the Green Party won votes from thousands sickened by Labour’s betrayals but horrified by the extremist Toryism of Reform UK.
They proved that even a basic alternative of taxing the rich, condemning attacks on people’s living standards and opposing genocide can inspire thousands into rejecting politicians funded by millionaires.
That simple lesson is at the heart of all the Scottish Socialist Party has fought for since our formation 27 years ago, and in the socialist alternative we offer in the Holyrood elections.
Scotland’s working-class majority needs genuine working-class voices in Holyrood. Voices that won’t be silenced or bought off by the demands of capitalist big business; by arms firms or privatised healthcare companies that fund Labour, or the billionaire Easdale brothers, owners of McGill’s buses, who’ve promised Scottish Labour a six-figure donation (i.e. over £100,000) to win the elections.
We need working-class socialist MSPs who will remain working-class fighters, living on the average skilled worker’s wage, to remain grounded, accountable, uncorrupted and incorruptible.
Unique amongst all political parties, that’s what the SSP has built into their constitution.
After being open, honest and public about our intentions for the past 12 months, SSP members have now selected candidates for all eight regional lists, so everyone in Scotland has the chance to vote socialist in their so-called ‘second vote’, for regional list MSPs.
That still leaves 73 local constituencies where the SSP are standing aside, leaving others on the left the option of standing.
We live in hope that the faction ridden Your Party – which hasn’t even decided on a body of policies yet, or on whether to contest Holyrood – does not at this 11th hour decide to cause division by standing against the long-established SSP in the regions.
Every single SSP candidate is proudly working-class.
For instance, in Central & Lothians West region we have Collette Bradley, a leader of many battles for improved conditions for Further Education support staff, as chair of their Scotland-wide union branch.
Topping our South Scotland list is Mark Sands, a UNISON steward with decades of experience standing up for local government workers against cuts by both Labour and SNP/Green councils.
Our Glasgow list includes Olivia Murphy, a nurse and UNISON activist, who won the best socialist vote for 20 years in the Southside Central council by-election.
The SSP advocate policies to increase ‘ordinary’ people’s incomes and services and cut their household bills.
Amongst other measures to put money in the pockets, postcodes and public services of millions, the SSP is advocating a £15-an-hour minimum wage for everyone aged 16 and over; a living student grant; a state pension matching the best in Europe; public ownership of transport to scrap profiteering and invest instead in free travel for everyone on buses, trains, subways and ferries, cutting poverty and pollution; and democratic public ownership of energy to abolish the profiteering, whereby in 3 years the UK’s 20 biggest energy companies made £483 billion in profit – that’s £7,000 for every man, woman and child!
And we are Scotland’s consistently anti-war party. Days after the 9/11 atrocity, the SSP’s national secretary and I met with the now sadly departed Brian Quail of Scottish CND and initiated the Scottish Coalition for Justice not War, which put 100,000 on the streets for the Glasgow demo against Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
People shouldn’t go into the elections holding their noses. They should raise their chins, lift their sights, and proudly vote for a secure future in an independent socialist Scotland that harnesses the nation’s wealth for its people, not for the millionaires who rip us off for profit every day and drag us into wars without end.