Was Keir Starmer naive, or did he con his way into No 10?

The "sunlight of hope" has vanished, eclipsed by the menacing storm clouds, as Sir Keir now warns that "it will get worse before it gets better". The public put their trust in Sir Keir to deliver change, instead they are being served the same old jam-tomorrow rhetoric from a Prime Minister who, by raising false hopes, cheated his way into Downing Street. No change there.

Ruth Marr, Stirling.

• IN eight short weeks, Labour has overseen a 10% rise in energy bills. It has kept 1.6 million children in poverty through a benefit cap which it used to oppose, deprived 10 million over-65s of their winter fuel allowance and slashed public spending by £5.5 billion.

All this while whining that it was all the fault of the Tory government. It was an omnishambles inherited by Labour, and the gullible British public should expect things to get much worse before they get better, according to Keir Starmer. And the time scale? Labour feels that 10 years in office should sort out the mess.

We need to take a lesson from the Americans. July 4 was Independence Day. It could have been Independence Day for Scotland. We would have been negotiating a far better deal for ourselves than this shabby Labour offering. After 14 years in opposition, the only people they represent is themselves.

Frances Scott, Edinburgh.

READ MORE:

• If you really want change, Labour, here's what you should do
• When will we Scots wake up to this energy folly?

Let's have a Royal Commission

JOHN Palfreyman (Letters, August 26) asks the new Labour Government to do three things: stop the demonisation of immigrants, rejoin the EU single market and reform council tax.

The good news for him is that the demonisation of immigrants has already been stopped. One of the first actions of the incoming government was to stop the Rwanda flights and to switch the focus regarding illegal immigration from the boats full of victims to the gangs of organised criminals behind the cross-Channel people-smuggling trade. Moreover, Labour is also committed to making legal immigration a labour market issue, linking skills requirements to training as well to overseas workers. The idea is that the UK should choose the route of upskilling our own population rather than relying on migrant labour, which is in many cases founded on enterprising young people exhorted by their home governments to "learn, earn and return". In other words, they upgrade their skills in the UK, build up capital from their UK employment and take it back to their own countries to invest in their own businesses there. I do not think it is demonisation to want young people from the UK to do the same.

With regard to the EU single market, what Mr Palfreyman suggests is in direct contradiction to the pledge made in Labour's 2024 manifesto: "There will be no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement." For what it is worth, I agree with Mr Palfreyman, but sadly, the Labour Government is not at liberty to act as we both wish, if it is to uphold its own commitment to the voters. My hope is that by the time of the next election, Labour will be able to put to the electorate a proposal that is closer to the single market and the customs union, perhaps maybe even a step back towards EEA membership. We shall see, but it cannot happen in the lifetime of this Parliament.

Finally, we have the question of the council tax, which has been an outstanding item in the SNP's in-tray since (almost unbelievably) 2007, when Alex Salmond stood on a very specific platform of "scrapping the hated council tax". Of course, it proved much more difficult than he planned, and it seems likewise to have defeated all of his increasingly hapless (some would say useless) successors. My suggestion is for a redistributive regional income tax and a much smaller council tax based on current property values rather than those of the last century. However, any reform would entail losers as well as winners and would therefore require cross-party agreement.

The best way forward would probably be a Royal Commission on Local Government Finance. Surely, the great minds of Scotland can create a better system than the one cobbled together in great haste by Michael Heseltine after the Great Poll Tax Debacle all those years ago? Or maybe not.

Peter A Russell, Glasgow.

The case for a land tax

SHONA Robison is right to feel angry about the mishandling of the UK economy and the knock-on effect on Scotland (“Robison to announce swathe of public sector cuts next month”, The Herald, August 24). However, it is within her gift to use Scotland’s devolved tax powers to turn things around here.

In its 2022 report Land Reform and Taxation, the Scottish Government’s own think-tank, the Scottish Land Commission, recommended “strengthening the role of land in the tax base”. It proposed that all land should go on to the valuation roll and that comprehensive information of ownership, use and value should be assembled. Later in the year it doubled down on its language, urging “systemic changes that would enable government to tax land values more effectively”.

The previous year the Social Justice and Fairness Commission produced a report which strongly favoured land value taxation (LVT) as part of a wider reform that would “ultimately remove our dependence on council tax, Land and Buildings Transaction Tax and non-domestic rates”. The convener of that commission was Shona Robison.

The Scottish Government could go even further, using LVT to reduce our punitive taxes on work and enterprise, notably income tax over which it has control. Earlier this month the distinguished economist Charles Goodhart wrote an article in the Financial Times about dealing with the UK’s £22 billion deficit. He urged Rachel Reeves to "raise the bulk, if not all, of the required revenue from a tax on the returns from land ownership” and noted the “overwhelming case for a land tax” made by the most prominent economists.

Land values are not created by the landowner: they are publicly-generated and belong back in the public purse as public revenue. It is time to make those who claim to own the country pay for its running costs.

John Digney, Buchlyvie.

Shona Robison (Image: Getty)

Tidal energy the way forward

WHILE agreeing with Otto Inglis (Letters, August 24) on the potential of onshore natural gas in the UK, I disagree with him on nuclear power. The waste problem remains, and nukes are war targets (as seen recently in Ukraine). For the UK, tidal is the key to cheap electricity; a 2021 paper to the Royal Society suggests it could supply 11% of the UK’s current annual electricity demand; a Severn Barrage alone 6-7%. And with road/rail slung across, transport times could be slashed. Off-peak energy could be used to produce green hydrogen.

Problem is, you can't make plutonium from dams, which is why nukes are still with us, despite being uninsurable.

George Morton, Rosyth.

• BOTH John Finlayson and Otto Inglis (Letters, August 24) are to be congratulated for exposing the net zero energy folly. It highlights the failure of both our governments to be transparent over the massive debts that will accrue from support for renewable energy.

Neither politicians has pointed out that gas has returned to the price that existed prior to the Ukraine conflict (around 6p/unit) but electricity, at 24.5p/unit, is now 50% higher than the 2022 price. That is what drives up energy bills and will only get worse once Ed Miliband scraps the use of gas, which supplies 80% of household energy, and replaces it with unaffordable energy from unreliable wind generators.

In addition, when are politicians at both Holyrood and Westminster going to be honest over the cost of keeping the lights on when the wind fails to blow?

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas.