Why SNP's Scottish Budget really doesn't matter
This SNP Budget is a pantomime – the real decisions will come after the Holyrood election
When Finance Secretary Shona Robison, stands up to deliver the Scottish Government’s Budget this week, she will attempt to imbue it with a righteous seriousness of stoic prudence and the credibility that comes from knowing her figures and formulas back to front and inside out.
She will fail miserably and yet her Budget shall pass – for Labour has let it be known that its MSPs shall not oppose the SNP’s plans. If ever there was an example of how unfit Scottish Labour is to take control of the Scottish administration, it is that it is not willing to offer up a serious challenge to the SNP’s appalling mismanagement of the public finances.
What is the point of having a Scottish Parliament or having Labour MSPs in it if they decide to simply wave through Robison’s fantasy figures without even first seeing whether they add up?
Labour should challenge Robison
Never has there been a greater example of how the SNP and Labour are two cheeks of the same guilty-looking face. Both parties are led by serial blaggers who peddle audacious, well-intentioned dreams that create brief expectations of a better life for some, almost certainly knowing they cannot be afforded and are so often dashed when they endure their first contact with reality.
Why is Labour not challenging a Finance Secretary who has already demonstrated an inability to explain her economic thinking to parliamentary colleagues in committee, never mind convince the public she knows her fractions when converted to percentages. It’s as if the civil servants write the Budget for Robison but she fails to memorise her lines.
The Budget is nothing other than a pantomime, a performative show conjured up to make a particular audience feel good for a brief moment in time, but that in all seriousness makes no difference to everyday life. After the warm feeling of encouragement, people walk out into the stark daylight and face the cold winter winds of SNP failure.
The nationalists are adding to the cost-of-living crisis rather than easing the pain. Its taxes are now officially higher than the rest of the UK’s, reducing economic activity, closing businesses and driving prices up – all while there is less spending power to meet the SNP’s extra costs.
They squander money by inflating the head count of government departments, as has been revealed in the case of the unnecessary burden of creating a separate Scottish benefits agency that employs 200 per cent more people than the comparative department serving England and Wales.
A reckoning looms
Robison and the SNP have been warned consistently by the independent-minded Scottish Fiscal Commission and Auditor General of Scotland about the challenges her policies and those of her ministerial predecessors, including John Swinney, have created over the years.
A reckoning is coming but it will not be faced before this election. Instead the SNP hopes to calm the nerves of the public by making a few cute announcements that might raise a half-hearted cheer among favoured interest groups – while postponing, where possible, the unpalatable decisions until later in the year.
The capital budget will undoubtedly need to be culled, if not now then in the autumn, with road and infrastructure improvements always likely to be the favoured victim so that the Green MSPs are more disposed to the SNP. Expect also more tightening of local council budget settlements.
Whoever the losers are in the Robison’s roll call of financial retribution, the blame will be pinned firmly on the UK Government at Westminster, ignoring the evidence of past increases in funding.
Unsurprisingly, with taxes and spending rising and borrowing maxed out, people are prone to ask with justification, where does the money all go? The evidence is there in the costs of SNP incompetence and delusion. Incompetence in public contracts that run over budget and over time, as evidenced in Audit Scotland reports; delusion in announcing new goals, then failing miserably.
By Labour deciding to pass the Scottish Government Budget come what may, it is now an irrelevance, because a new budget will still be required to correct all that is wrong in Scotland – most of which is the result of the SNP-Labour consensus in Holyrood.
Political self-indulgence
Scotland deserves better than this. We need an administration that is frank and honest with the voters about the state of the public finances and commits to address the shortfalls by removing the extravagances we do not need or cannot afford.
Of course there are public programmes that sound progressive and uplifting, but if their cost results in collapsing the vital services in education, health and justice then we need to accept decorative appendages are no more than political self-indulgence.
Scotland deserves a new Budget that corrects the tax disadvantages that drive our brightest talents to relocate to elsewhere in the UK or foreign parts. We need a budget that encourages real growth and improved productivity, that rewards risk-taking and nurtures a new generation of Scots entrepreneurs who can turn our country’s fortunes around, bringing new jobs in the process.
To achieve any of those goals, we need a new political management that understands business, believes in the creativity of Scots to invent solutions and believes the best benefit is our people having good jobs that reward well and provide self-confidence and dignity.
The task is clearly beyond Robison and, shamefully, Labour has abandoned the battlefield. Who then is going to turn our public finances around and restore Scotland as a powerhouse of prosperity and opportunity within the United Kingdom? Looking around at the current incumbents, we shall need new MSPs to provide the answer.
If we don’t grasp the opportunity of appointing new people who recognise the problems, then we shall not experience the benefits of putting them right.
Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and editor of ThinkScotland.org
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