Keir Starmer’s chances of becoming the UK’s next prime minister seem to be improving by the day. From a huge win in the Rutherglen by-election to a ‘buoyant’ atmosphere at Labour’s party conference in Liverpool, the party of the opposition is on the up.
The Tories and the SNP, meanwhile, continue to be distracted by chaotic messaging and party infighting. But could a Labour government pull together the fractured state that is Great Britain in a way the Tories haven’t been able to? Possibly – but it would mean repairing relationships within their own party first.
In the politics of the Union, Welsh and Scottish Labour have been at loggerheads for quite a while – and reports suggest this has Starmer’s office pretty worried. Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford regularly talks of a ‘union of four territories’, the importance of sovereignty and Scotland having the right to decide its own future.
Drakeford is speaking for a wide constituency in Welsh Labour when he speaks in such tones, but it is one which irritates large elements in the Scottish party.
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