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Alistair Grant on the last day of the Scottish Labour Conference
The Scotsman
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18/02/2024
Alistair Grant on the last day of the Scottish Labour Conference
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00:00
[Music]
00:05
Hello, I'm Alistair Grant and I'm the Political Editor of the Scotsman and I'm here on the
00:08
last day of the Scottish Labour Conference in Glasgow. It's actually just finished, you
00:12
might be able to see some of the railings being taken down behind me. But we heard from
00:17
Keir Starmer, the UK Labour leader today, giving a speech that lasted for about 40 minutes.
00:22
Not an awful lot new in it from a journalist's perspective, but plenty of rhetoric that went
00:27
down well in the hall. Keir Starmer promising national renewal if Labour wins that upcoming
00:32
general election, making a direct appeal to those voters in Scotland who maybe backed
00:37
Labour in the past but have since supported the SNP in recent years. Keir Starmer very
00:43
clear there's a mountain to climb for the party, it has to fight for every vote. He
00:48
had a lot of direct criticism of the SNP. Hunza Yousaf, the First Minister, has said
00:52
repeatedly that Labour doesn't need Scotland to win that general election. Keir Starmer
00:57
today clear that that's not the case and that as far as he's concerned there's everything
01:02
to play for. Politics is volatile, he said. The Tories could still win that election.
01:08
Elsewhere, he also defended the Labour Party's recent U-turn over its pledge to spend £28
01:14
billion a year on its Greed Investment plans. He also touched on the oil and gas sector,
01:20
talking about a recent visit he'd made to Aberdeen. He said in his speech that work
01:25
in the oil and gas industry will continue for decades to come. I think it's important
01:30
to say, to provide some background context to this, that Labour's been getting a lot
01:34
of criticism from the oil and gas sector over its plans to extend and increase the windfall
01:39
tax. There's been a huge furious backlash from the sector over that. As I say, it's
01:44
the last day of the Scottish Labour Conference. I think it's fair to say there's a renewed
01:48
sense of optimism in the party. When you walked around the conference it was a lot bigger
01:52
than maybe the Scottish Labour Party conferences have been in recent years. I've been going
01:56
to them since around 2017 and there was a period when they were a lot smaller and where
02:01
there was a sense of doom and gloom over the party's electoral prospects. That's completely
02:07
changed. There really is a sense of optimism going into that general election. I think
02:11
actually Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, making the point from the conference
02:14
stage, he was saying that it's the biggest Scottish Labour conference there's been in
02:19
22 years. That maybe just demonstrates some of the changes that have taken place. They
02:23
are definitely going into that general election with a renewed confidence that would have
02:28
been unheard of even just a few years ago.
02:30
[Music]
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