GRAHAM GRANT: As the SNP prepares to pick our pockets once again, is it time to let Westminster take back control of tax?
You can tell the day of the Scottish Budget is looming by the ratcheting-up of SNP propaganda aimed at ducking the blame for financial turmoil.
The spin operation isn’t the smooth-running engine it once was, but it is still able to churn out any number of half-truths and distortions when required.
On Sunday, the official Scottish Government account on X, formerly Twitter, claimed that Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement had led to a real-terms cut for the NHS in Scotland.
Other users of the website helpfully pointed out this was nonsense and a ‘community note’ was added which branded the original tweet ‘misleading’ – as the UK Government doesn’t provide funding for ‘specific policy areas’ north of the Border.
Deputy First Minister Shona Robison and First Minister Humza Yousaf
The social media team was also busy on Saturday, tweeting the UK economy had been ‘damaged’ by Brexit, which Tory MSP Murdo Fraser dismissed as ‘simply a lie’.
Unsportingly, he also asked ‘what would be the impact of Scexit [Scotland’s withdrawal from the UK] on our economy and public services?’ – predictably, no reply was forthcoming.
The reason for this desperate attempt at passing the buck isn’t hard to guess – today Shona Robison, the Finance Secretary, is due to unveil a Budget likely to be decidedly lacking in seasonal good cheer.
According to speculation, she will announce a new tax band for higher earners, on the basis that there is a ‘social contract’ in Scotland that means Scots get ‘free tuition, free prescriptions [and] better childcare’.
She said the ‘decisions that we have made previously [ie tax hikes] have been based on those with the broader shoulders paying a bit more’ – turning Scotland into the highest-taxed part of the UK.
Yet economists have warned a mooted 44p rate for income above £75,000 would generate only around £40million, a drop in the ocean when it comes to plugging a projected £1.5billion black hole in Scottish Government finances.
Talk of a ‘social contract’ seems to have replaced the usual tripe about ‘progressive’ taxation, but there is no contract between voters and politicians – if there was, there would be so many lawsuits for breaching the terms that the courts would have to open round the clock.
Is a decent education included in the contract? Possibly not, given that Scotland has plunged down the global rankings for basic skills, lagging behind several former Soviet republics – as well as England.
Yet Nicola Sturgeon spent years vowing to close the pupil attainment gap – a failed mission that has cost many millions.
The SNP manifesto in 2021 admitted that £750million had been invested in trying to stamp out the postcode lottery in state education.
As for the NHS, surely the contract has been breached again – last year, stand-in finance secretary John Swinney hiked higher-rate income tax, calling it a ‘penny for patient care’.
But does anyone really believe that the extra cash, assuming that it has been directed towards the NHS, has made any difference, given that it remains in a critical condition – with nearly 830,000 people waiting to be seen for operations, tests and out-patient appointments?
Ms Robison reeled off big-ticket policies such as ‘free’ prescriptions (including for painkillers such as paracetamol) which cost £1.4billion a year – a figure that has risen by 19 per cent in the past decade.
‘Free’ tuition is also something of a myth given that a lot of young Scots can’t get places at universities because of the SNP’s cap on student numbers.
A host of costly perks and giveaways – Ms Sturgeon’s ‘baby boxes’ among them – combined with endemic waste have led the Nationalists into a financial quagmire of their own making, but as usual it’s someone else’s fault.
Mind you, it’s hard to see how Brexit explains the many unforced errors we’ve seen on the SNP’s watch, from unfinished ferries to a botched Census.
Now it’s time for the hard-pressed taxpayer, struggling to pay punitive energy bills and sky-high mortgage prices, to pick up the tab for the SNP’s largesse, and its spectacular incompetence.
The social contract cited by Ms Robison is underpinned by devolution, which her party wants to scrap in favour of independence.
In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Reg – played by John Cleese – asks what the Romans had ever done for the population, only to be bombarded with valid suggestions, such as medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, and roads.
Ask the same question of Holyrood and the list of replies would be distinctly shorter – in fact, for many of us the answer would be ‘tax rises’.
In return, we’ve got failing public services, from a sick NHS to a much-diminished police force with the lowest officer numbers since 2008, and a moribund economy managed – or mismanaged – by the SNP in cahoots with the Marxist Greens.
Given this track record, how many of us would be genuinely aggrieved if tax-varying powers were sent back to the UK Government?
There would be a lot of self-righteous hot air about an attack on the sovereignty of the Scottish parliament, and demonstrations doubtless featuring someone hollering into a loudhailer about the evil Tories.
Ms Sturgeon might have to take a break from penning her memoir to give an impromptu press conference outside her house to rail against Westminster, and Alex Salmond could be depended upon to blow a gasket.
Social media would go into meltdown, but that’s hardly unusual, and when the shouting had died down, a lot of us would notice we had something approaching disposable income, once the dreaded ‘SC’ tax code had been stripped from our payslips.
A daydream for now, perhaps, but it might win the backing of anyone who works for a living – and wouldn’t mind keeping more of their hard-earned cash.
In the meantime, there are tentative signs that some within the independence movement, including the SNP’s former economic mastermind Andrew Wilson, believe Ms Robison and her colleagues are taking the wrong tack.
Mr Wilson said it was ‘always worth considering’ the opinion of Sir Tom Hunter, one of Scotland’s wealthiest men.
Sir Tom has warned that an income tax rise would create a perception that the country was ‘not open for investment’ – and argued wasteful public spending should be curtailed instead.
Former MSP Mr Wilson was the brains behind the SNP’s ‘growth commission’, which in 2018 produced a blueprint for the economy of an independent Scotland – but is anyone in the party hierarchy prepared to listen to him now?
Meanwhile, analysis from the Scottish Labour Party found Scotland’s economy would be £11.5billion larger if it had kept pace with growth in the North-West of England between 2012 and 2021.
It would be £9.6billion larger if it had matched Wales and £9.1billion larger if it had kept pace with the West Midlands.
Growing the economy will always be a secondary consideration for a party that spends its time fantasising – at our expense – about an independent socialist nirvana which will never materialise.
Don’t believe the spin: the Nationalists have run out of scapegoats – and they have no one to blame for the mess this country is in but themselves.
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