Alistair Grant on the last day of the Scottish Labour Conference

Transcript

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]