How the Scottish Budget confirmed the poll-topping SNP are tired and visionless

Instead, it was a case of fiddling while Scotland stagnates; like a calculated decision to offer nothing but more of the same, in confidence that this will be enough to get Mr Swinney and his friends across the line in May. Why risk that with commitments which might cause offence?

This should sound alarm bells for the implications thereafter. If there is no reforming vision just a few months before these elections, what chance is there of anything more interesting emerging subsequently, if in the same hands? Is the status quo really the best Scotland can aspire to?”

READ MORE: Swinney defends Budget 'smallest tax cut in history' as SNP under fire for 'ruinous' benefits bill

‘A very weird tax cut’

As the Fraser of Allander Institute said, it was a Budget “where the silences were loudest”; a few baubles thrown around to conceal a £480 million spending cut, even compared to what was announced last June, due to “much weaker underlying tax forecasts”.

The announcement intended to catch the uncritical eye or half-heard news bulletin was that most Scots will pay less income tax than in the rest of the UK. This is achieved by a cut of 61p a week for lowest earners while anyone earning more than £33,000 will pay significantly more than elsewhere.

One expert, Dan Neidle, described that 61p as “a very weird tax cut, perhaps the smallest income tax cut in history”, before explaining why there is actually no tax cut for anyone. “By freezing the personal allowance threshold, everyone earning over £12,947 is worse off by 72 pence… in real terms nobody is receiving a tax cut.”

READ MORE: Holyrood Election Poll: SNP on track to win, with Reform UK and Scottish Labour neck-and-neck

The politics of pennies

It is difficult to imagine that the minutiae of how many pennies have been gained or lost, in absolute terms or compared to the rest of the UK, is what the founding fathers and mothers had in mind as their mission for the Scottish Parliament. Yet, judging by Finance Secretary Shona Robison’s valedictory set-piece, this is what we have been reduced to.

“We’re paying 61p a week less,” boast the proud patriots. “We’re paying 72p a week more,” reply the sceptics. Is this to be the level at which Scottish political debate must be conducted for another five years? And is it any surprise so many normal people have switched off?

It is disappointing that the tax and benefit powers, which are add-ons since the original devolution settlement, are resulting in less money coming in and more going out, a weaker economy and a much higher benefits bill. What they have not achieved is any discernible improvement across the whole gamut of public services.

READ MORE: Number of Scots paying higher income tax rates to reach almost 950,000

Radical or soon-to-be forgotten?

Instead, the other headlines we were invited to rejoice in as symptoms of radical intent involved taxing mansions and private planes though there is no need to hurry to the barricades since neither is even intended to take effect for another couple of years, by which time they might well have been forgotten about.

A “mansion” is defined as a property worth more than £1m which covers less than one per cent of Scottish housing stock; hardly the biggest issue in the midst of a “housing emergency”. As a substitute for the SNP’s 2008 promise to scrap the “regressive, unfair council tax”, it is a peashooter, to be fired 20 years after that unfulfilled commitment was made.

Since then, not an ounce of political creativity has been applied to offering something radically different, notably a land value tax, which might actually cause some inconvenience to the habitués of Scotland’s real mansions, set in the midst of large estates which are equally untouched by any whiff of meaningful reform. And so it goes drearily on.

SNP conservatism

Last year, Ms Robison said council tax reform could not proceed without “consensus” which is the ultimate cop-out from leadership. There will never be “consensus” where there are losers as well as winners. Funding local government is a policy area in which Scotland has the powers to do something radically different – yet refuses to contemplate out of pure political conservatism.

Meanwhile, local government continues to be one of their fiscal whipping-boys. Having studied the small print, Fraser of Allander concludes: “The local government settlement looks very difficult over the three-year period, particularly as this includes social care where the Scottish Government have assumed, again, that there will be growing demands. The justice settlement also looks very difficult.”

Loosely translated, that means more council cuts, a deepening social care crisis and even longer court delays. Who will vote for that manifesto?

A confidence trick

The real headline should be that Ms Robison’s Budget sent a warning about how the May elections will be fought unless someone can cut through the smug, trivialising inertia in order to focus on what they should be about.

How can the powers and very substantial resources of the Scottish Government be better used to achieve a flourishing economy and a well-educated, compassionate and creative society that is going forward on key indicators of social justice? We are no nearer to any of that than 20 years ago.

The scenario preferred by Mr Swinney is to pretend he is leading a “straight fight” to save us from Reform. It is balderdash. The only winners from promoting that fiction are Reform and himself. Their shared interest will be in keeping the debate away from devolved issues of real meaning to people’s lives for which Holyrood has responsibility.

Time is short to avoid this confidence trick upon the Scottish electorate. The Budget this week confirmed the image of a tired, visionless administration. If Scotland wants something better, it is going to have to find a way of voting for it.