by Rab Bruce’s Spider

In one of the recent terror attacks in London, a police officer died while carrying out his duty to protect MPs in the Houses of Parliament. Yesterday, the Tories, backed by their new DUP allies, voted down Labour’s proposal to begin recruiting more Emergency Service personnel and to scrap the current freeze on Public Sector pay. One wonders how those Tories can look the Police officers in the eye this morning.

This disgraceful ingratitude is only the most egregious of recent Tory displays of uncaring arrogance. They have praised the NHS workers who ran to help victims of the attacks, they have praised the bravery of Fire Service personnel who fought the blaze at Grenfell Tower, yet, while spending £1bn to ensure the DUP help them retain power, they have proven unwilling to acknowledge the dedication of Emergency Service Personnel. Worse, they actually cheered when they won the vote.

Let us not forget that the pay cap also applies to teachers, Armed Forces personnel and Council workers among others. All of these people must surely now know what the Tories think of them. All the talk of ending Austerity was merely empty rhetoric, and the Magic Money Tree is apparently only available for the Tories themselves.

And in case you were wondering how Ruth Davidson’s 13 Scottish MPs voted, it may not surprise you to learn that they dutifully backed their London bosses and helped swing the vote against removing the pay cap. That might be worth remembering the next time Colonel Davidson stands up in Holyrood to complain about Scottish NHS, Police, fire Service, etc.

This is about more than simple fairness, though. Austerity is a failed project. It is purely ideological and has been called out as highly flawed by many leading economists. What this continuing pay cap does is keep wages in the public sector low. That is not only bad for those public sector workers who see Brexit-induced inflation eroding their pay, it allows private sector employers to keep their wage bill down because there is no competition from the public sector. So everyone in employment loses out. With less money to spend on anything except essentials like mortgages, rent, food, transport and heating, people simply stop spending. This will slow the economy even further.

Scottish public sector workers may take a little comfort from the fact that, unlike the administrations in the rest of the UK, the Scottish Government has, so far, followed the recommendations of the Public Pay Review Board, but that extra money has to come from somewhere and, as long as Westminster holds the purse strings, something else will need to be sacrificed to honour even modest pay increases.

There is, of course, a solution to this for Scotland, but a great many of our fellow citizens remain quite happy to go along with the cruel and dysfunctional workings of the UK. One wonders what it will take to alter their opinions.