People need hope. Labour promised hope with its mantra of "change". Anas Sarwar told us: “Read my lips: no austerity under Labour.”

Well, that was lies. Austerity is back - and as it walks in one door, hope leaves by the other. There will be no change under Labour, just more pain. This time suffering comes with the salve of caring smiles, rather than the stiletto of cruel Tory sneers; that’s the only difference.

Keir Starmer’s speech this week was a study in despair. The Budget will be “painful". If he’s telling the truth, Starmer claims “those with the broadest shoulders” will “bear the heavier burden”. However, we’re all going to buckle under the weight of public service cuts, especially the poorest, weakest, and sickest.

Pursuing non-doms, and raising capital gains and inheritance taxes must happen. The rich should suffer like the rest of us. But the listing ship of state will still sink. Labour is trying to keep one plank of the hull in tact, as seawater pours in from every direction.

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We need momentous change to reset our course and steer towards an horizon where the sun is at least visible, even if it doesn’t shine. This country cannot continue in the darkness and winter of austerity.

The fabric of our society has already come apart. Child poverty would make Dickens weep. The far-right snarls, smelling blood amid the collapse of trust in politics and the drastic decline in living standards.

We cannot fix this mess until the UK Government acknowledges the principle problem. Even more than Tory chaos, stupidity and venality, the cause of our woes is Brexit. It smashed us to pieces.

We’re like a victim in a horror movie, running around locking windows and doors, even though the killer is already inside our house. Unless we slay the monster, we’ll never be safe.

If anyone still cleaves to Brexit their brains must have poured from their ears. The price we pay varies from expert to expert, think-tank to think-tank, but the answer is always the same: it’s skinning us alive.

Last year, Bloomberg put the cost of Brexit to the economy at £100 billion annually. Goldman Sachs says post-Brexit Britain “significantly underperformed” other advanced economies since the 2016 EU referendum. We’ve grown 5% less after leaving than comparable nations.

Cambridge Econometrics estimates Brexit cost each citizen £2000 in 2023, and removed nearly two million jobs.

Economists for the TUC say we’ve suffered the highest inflation and lowest economic growth of any G7 nation since the end of 2021, with prices rising more than 14%. Investment is at its lowest compared to other G7 countries for the third year running, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research.

Most damning of all, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says: “Both exports and imports will be around 15% lower in the long run than if the UK had remained in the EU … New trade deals with non-EU countries will not have a material impact.”

'The cause of our woes is Brexit''The cause of our woes is Brexit' (Image: PA)

For those who voted Leave due to immigration, the OBR said it was assumed that post-Brexit “net inward migration” would settle at around 129,000 annually. It’s now “revised up” projections to around 315,000 annually.

We could quote statistics forever, but we all feel the damage brutally evident in our lives. Yet Starmer just tinkers around the edges - it’s his default mode - when it comes to Europe.

After doom-mongering in the Downing Street garden, he headed to Berlin for talks about a new co-operation treaty with Germany. Labour wants to “reset” European relations, and Starmer claims his summit with Chancellor Olaf Scholz will “turn a corner on Brexit”.

He’s wrong. The only way to turn the corner is to start a national conversation about the need to reverse the worst, most self-harming decision this nation ever took.

The people are ready to listen. YouGov polling this month showed support for rejoining the EU at 59% compared to 41% against. Polling by Opinium reveals clear majorities of Britons believing Brexit has been bad for the economy, driven up prices, and hampered immigration controls. Just 22% think Brexit has worked.

So, we need to talk about Brexit, and we need to do it now before Labour’s Austerity MKII takes us beyond the point of no return. If the SNP was smart it would lead this conversation.

Nationalists won’t find much traction in simply whining about Labour austerity, as they’ve been doing. Not only has the Scottish Government engaged in its own ruthless cuts - like slashing the affordable homes budget in the middle of a housing crisis with 10,000 children in temporary accommodation - it’s repeatedly failed to use all the devolutionary powers available to mitigate the worst excess of austerity.

Additionally, the Scottish Fiscal Commission says the SNP Government deserves blame for what’s happened. While UK Government policies “contribute to the pressures on the Scottish budget, much of the pressure comes from the Scottish Government’s own decisions”. Among those decisions was the council tax freeze which even pre-schoolers could have told you was wrong-headed.

So simply trying to act as Starmer’s conscience, and raising issues like the two-child benefit cap or ending the winter fuel payment for all pensioners, won’t help the SNP much. Instead, the party could find a very necessary evolutionary niche through forcing a conversation on Brexit-reversal.

If there’s one matter most people will trust the SNP on it’s the party’s commitment to Europe. Unlike its independence policy, or the lip-service paid to egalitarianism, most voters believe the SNP when it comes to Europe.

With polls now showing nationalists losing Holyrood in 2026, the SNP has one last chance: relentlessly making the case for EU return. Sarwar will soon be smeared with the ordure of Starmer’s austerity, so by providing a viable alternative - a path to resetting not just Scotland but all of Britain - the SNP could find hope for its political future.

Yet can a party so riven, so tired, so proven a failure in government, really gather the energy for the task? Well, it must, if it’s to survive. Indeed, the hopes of the rest of us depend on someone making the case for Brexit-reversal, and right now - God help us - that’s the SNP.

Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer at Large. He’s a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs and foreign and domestic politics.