Gordon Brown’s blunt warning to Nicola Sturgeon: ‘Rest of UK will get our pensions’ | UK | News (Reports)

Scottish Labour is looking for another leader after Richard Leonard resigned just four months before May’s Holyrood election. Mr Leonard, who had been leader for three years, said his decision to step aside was in the “best interests of the party”. Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, will take over on a temporary basis.

She warned the party’s 23 MSPs that they face “the fight of our lives” – with some polls predicting Labour’s support could drop them into fourth place behind the Scottish Greens.

Gordon Brown could be the solution, according to ex-MP George Galloway, who argued the former Prime Minister is the perfect candidate to take the job and fight First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s independence bid ahead of the Scottish elections.

He wrote on Twitter: “I have known Gordon Brown 45 years.

“Labour is not my party.

“Making him Scottish Labour leader would be the biggest single thing the party could do to rescue Scotland from the perdition of perpetual SNP rule, the Neverendum, and could save Britain.”

Many social media users were quick to back Mr Galloway’s comments, as they detailed how Mr Brown could be the “SNP’s nightmare”.

One person wrote: “Gordon Brown becoming next Scottish Labour leader would be the SNP’s nightmare.

“For that reason, I would be happy if the rumour is true.”

Andrew Adonis, Labour member of the House of Lords, also tipped the former Prime Minister to step up to lead Labour in Scotland.

Mr Brown played a prominent role in the lead-up to, and the aftermath of, the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, campaigning for Scotland to stay in the UK.

For example, in a keynote speech in Fife, the former Prime Minister brilliantly shed light on the implications of independence on the rest of the UK.

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He argued that England, Wales and Northern Ireland would benefit in the event of Scotland achieving independence, as the other three nations would receive the “lion’s share” of Westminster’s pension fund.

He claimed pensions were the third of Alex Salmond’s “real” problems after former Chancellor George Osborne ruled out a formal deal to share the pound and ex-European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said it would be “difficult, if not impossible” for a separate Scotland to join the EU.

The Scottish Government’s White Paper on independence during the 2014 referendum promised that workers’ state pension entitlements would have been honoured and raised the prospect of having a lower retirement age than the UK.

However, Mr Osborne’s decision to rule out a currency union raised questions about this pledge, particularly in what currency Scots’ state pensions would have been calculated and paid.

Launching a campaign to “keep our British pensions”, Mr Brown said: “They [the separatists] haven’t answered the basic problem – you have paid into your pension, into the UK Exchequer all your lives, you’ve paid your national insurance, you’ve paid your taxes so that you have a right to a pension.

“You are expecting, quite rightly, that you will get a British pension – but if there is independence, the British pension stops, the national insurance fund that you’re paying into is broken up.

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“There will be a separate Scottish national insurance fund, and the rest of the UK will have the lion’s share.”

Mr Brown also argued that the SNP’s estimates for oil revenues – which would have helped fund pensions under independence – were at odds with private documents leaked to the media.

He added: “They didn’t expect to get £6.9billion from oil, they only expect to get £4billion … far from having all these billions of resources, the SNP are exaggerating all the time.

“That difference of over two million is the equivalent of half the amount of money spent on everybody’s pension in Scotland.

“If that money is not there, how are pensions going to be afforded?”

He said the current system worked thanks to the pooling of risks and resources across the UK.

He explained: “We pay our national insurance and we pay our taxes so that we can pay for our pensions later. We have more needs (in Scotland) and more pensioners, therefore we get more.

“The SNP know that they have got a problem … the rising demand for pensions, set against the money that they have, means there is greater volatility in social security spending.”

Gregg McClymont, Labour’s former pension spokesman, also said at the time: “Withdraw Scotland from the UK and Scots are withdrawn from the UK pensions system.

“The UK state pension would cease to exist in Scotland.

“The security and certainty of the UK’s pension promise would disappear overnight for Scottish pensioners and for the rest of us who have been paying into the system.”

However, Nicola Sturgeon, who at the time was Deputy First Minister, rebutted: “The last person anyone in Scotland will take lessons from when it comes to pensions is Gordon Brown – the man who destroyed final-salary pension schemes with his £100billion raid, and insulted our older folk with a miserly 75p increase in the state pension.

“Mr Brown’s track record means that he lacks all credibility on this subject, so it is little wonder that his speech bears little relationship with reality.”

The Scottish Government’s White Paper in 2014 promised to pay state pensions “on time and in full” after independence, but did not stipulate how this would be administered or funded.

It also pledged to review the UK Government’s decision to increase the state retirement age to 67 between 2026 and 2028, stating this may not be necessary thanks to lower life expectancy in Scotland.

But the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) published a report stating the document had failed to answer a series of key questions about pensions.

Despite the SNP’ claims to the contrary, the institute said funding the state pension in a separate Scotland would have been “more of a challenge” because there would have been fewer taxpayers for each old age pensioner.

In the last few years, Ms Sturgeon has not made any comments on whether Scots will be able to retain their pensions in case of independence.

However, a survey recently conducted by Savanta ComRes showed Ms Sturgeon’s personal ratings are up, with 76 percent of voters believing her to be intelligent – an increase of three points.

74 percent of respondents said she is a strong leader, also up three points, and 57 percent believe she is genuine, up two points.

More than a third of 2019 Labour voters said the SNP’s response to the pandemic means they are now more likely to vote for the party in the Scottish Parliament election in May, with 13 percent of 2019 Tory voters saying the same thing.

Meanwhile, a majority of Scots continue to support Scottish independence, with the latest survey putting support for ‘Yes’ at 57 percent and ‘No’ at 43 percent.