How SNP is rivalling Liz Truss for financial incompetence
John Swinney is hoping that opposition MSPs can be persuaded to save his Budget from being voted down, and save his government in the process
And we’re off. John Swinney has, perhaps even without originally meaning to, fired the starting pistol for the next Scottish election and, in all likelihood, the end of nationalist rule.
The big question now is whether the SNP is able to make it to the scheduled end of this parliamentary term after unveiling a financial boorach which rivals Liz Truss for incompetence.
To fill a near £1 billion hole in this year’s budget, which they are legally bound to balance, the SNP is first raiding the ScotWind funds for around half the missing sum. That’s the one-off cash that has come from selling Scotland’s seabed for renewables – money that was supposed to be spent for long-term gain and making our economy greener. By December 31, the SNP government may have spent every last penny.
That has still left them needing £500m worth of savings which they say they will meet by scrapping their pledge to provide all primary school pupils with free school meals and making cuts to public spending including mental health services, environmental projects and the railways.
They’ve tried to shift the blame to their usual scapegoats, but it’s more difficult this time. The Conservative government is gone and the Institute for Fiscal Studies is among economists pointing out that the SNP and Green governments are to blame. That they should have recognised the pressure that over-promising to keep power was going to place on the public purse and services.
The new Labour government has its financial troubles but the SNP will find it difficult to shift responsibility onto them for the general chaos, under-performing Scottish economy and financial mismanagement embodied by the ferries fiasco. The public in Scotland have become increasingly fed up.
In 2007, 2011 and even 2016, there was a general air of competence about the SNP which people repeatedly told me on doorsteps was more important to them than independence. They voted SNP in elections but no to independence because they felt the SNP was doing a good job. Not now.
The late Margo MacDonald once told me that it would be when working people realised Labour was not working for them but for themselves that they would stop voting for them. One could argue that the 17 years between 2007 and 2024 proved her point. And that perhaps now the SNP has fallen into the same trap. The game is up.
No doubt the First Minister will start courting opposition MSPs to help save next year’s budget, which everyone expects to contain another black hole, and with it potentially his government. Concessions fulfilling opposition policies may be offered to bring them on board.
It is what his predecessor Alex Salmond did in minority government, most notably with the Conservatives between 2007 and 2011. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have won concessions over the years and the Greens were recently part of this unsuccessful government.
Potentially John Swinney could make cuts and concessions in 2025/26, reverse them in the budget before the country goes to the polls, and then leave someone else to clean up the mess after an election 18 months from now. That, after all, seems to be the way in British politics now.
Christine Jardine is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West
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