SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Basket case Budget that proves SNP despises Scotland’s strivers – at the very time we need more of them

By Daily Mail Comment[1]

Published: 00:11, 20 December 2023 | Updated: 00:17, 20 December 2023

The SNP[2]'s basket case Budget was a desperate, spiteful act by a government that is economically illiterate.

Shona Robison's hollow rhetoric about a 'social contract' and 'progressive' taxation could not disguise the indisputable truth that the Nationalists have driven Scotland into a financial quagmire.

Economic growth has been running at about half the UK level since 2014 and continues to languish in the doldrums - with no hope of revival while the SNP remains in league with the Marxist Greens.

The talent pool is so shallow that key posts around the Cabinet table are occupied by ministers who would be out of their depth running a community council

Having steered most public services from schools to the NHS into a state of poorly managed decline, the SNP is left with a GBP1.5billion funding black hole - and predictably seeks to plug it with yet another tax raid on Scots with 'broad shoulders'.

This intellectually bankrupt argument is built on the premise that higher earners should pay proportionately more - but this overlooks the fact that Scotland is already the highest taxed part of the UK.

Relentless tax-grabs have seen disposable income dwindle for the professionals we badly need to recruit and retain, creating a cross-Border disparity that means working north of the Border is bad for your bank balance.

Now a new tax band of 45p in the pound will be created for those earning between GBP75,000 and GBP125,140 - even though it will raise a relatively small sum, as well as hitting the salaries of headteachers and senior police officers.

An analysis by the Fraser of Allander Institute concluded that the new tax rate would generate only GBP60million a year, once behavioural changes are taken into account - a drop in the ocean given that total annual state spending runs into the tens of billions.

Those targeted by the new band will face a marginal tax rate of 47 per cent when National Insurance is taken into account, rising to 67 per cent for earnings of GBP100,000.

Its only real function is to demonstrate that Scotland is somehow 'fairer' than the rest of the UK, reinforcing our distinctive 'values', as Ms Robison described them, regardless of the impact on the moribund economy, which could be severe.

The threshold for the higher rate will be frozen at GBP43,663, meaning thousands more people will be dragged into paying it.

But the cumulative effect of the SNP's addiction to high taxes extends beyond the nation's fast-diminishing pay packets - they have sapped the ambition of young people who want to make a better life for themselves by getting good jobs or starting new businesses.

Last year, 530,000 taxpayers paid the higher and top rates of tax but this year 648,000 Scots will pay the higher, advanced rates.

Who will stand up for the strivers, the entrepreneurs, and the aspirational Scots who are the lifeblood of the economy?

Not the SNP, which has presided over a bloated public sector and a sprawling network of quangos run by fat cat placemen.

Yesterday's Budget also reinforces catastrophic social divisions which have consigned large swathes of the population to an existence funded by handouts from the state - with devolved benefits costing taxpayers more than GBP6billion a year.

Yet, unforgivably, there wasn't so much as a whisper in the Finance Secretary's statement about the one in 20 working-age people who have never done a day's work in their life in parts of Scotland - a number that has rocketed since the Nationalists came to power.

It is an appalling indictment of wasted potential, but the SNP Government has no interest in getting them into jobs, meaning those 'broad-shouldered' Scots who work for a living must bear even more of the tax burden.

For all of their lofty talk about 'progressive' values, the Nationalists plan to slash the housing budget at a time of spiralling homelessness, and are cutting vital cash for education reform despite the pupil attainment crisis.

The pot of funding for tackling child poverty - which the SNP trumpets as part of its core mission - will also be cut, making a mockery of Humza Yousaf's claim in September that his government would be 'unashamedly anti-poverty and pro-growth'.

This Budget, underpinned by such blatant hypocrisy, is a disaster for Scotland from beginning to end, illustrating the pathological incompetence of the First Minister and his top team.

His Health Secretary is under investigation for claiming overseas data roaming charges of nearly GBP11,000 for his parliamentary iPad - while attempting to run the NHS, which has a budget of nearly GBP20billion a year.

Derek Mackay, one of Ms Robison's predecessors, quit hours before the Scottish Budget in 2020 after it emerged he had bombarded a teenage boy with inappropriate online messages.

Mr Mackay once admitted he had never heard of the Laffer Curve, which dictates that revenues can go up if taxes are cut - and there is little sign that Ms Robison knows any better.

The talent pool is so shallow that key posts around the Cabinet table are occupied by ministers who would be out of their depth running a community council - let alone government departments - with no credible vision for the future of Scotland, barring their doomed bid to break up Britain.

Buck-passing is a deeply ingrained part of the SNP's modus operandi, and in recent days a spin operation by official government social media accounts has sought to pass the blame for its abysmal failure to the Conservative Government.

It is an abdication of responsibility on a grand scale given that the Nationalists have been in power at Holyrood for 16 calamitous years.

Ms Robison mentioned Westminster, the UK Government, Brexit, and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt a total of 25 times yesterday as she tried to portray the Tories once again as pantomime villains.

She also resorted to sophistry by claiming that the cost of a council tax freeze, promised by Mr Yousaf, would be fully covered by central government.

In fact, ministers have offered local authorities only GBP140million of funding to compensate for the pledge, which is around half the amount they demanded.

Scotland is in such a dire position because the SNP has wasted so many billions on failed projects, from unfinished ferries to a botched Census, and a series of other financial scandals.

In Glasgow, the SNP council introduced a Low Emission Zone banning older petrol and diesel cars from the city centre but was forced to spend almost a quarter of a million pounds of taxpayers' cash on hiring vehicles to replace those it owns which don't meet new anti-pollution rules.

Such chaos and mismanagement are typical of the posturing and virtue-signalling which characterise the Nationalists' approach to government, and its brazen profligacy - which is only possible because ultimately more money will always be forthcoming from Westminster.

While waste has run rampant, businesses are an afterthought, with the SNP refusing to match the UK Government's 75 per cent rates relief to the vast majority of Scottish firms, leaving many of them struggling to survive.

Scotland deserves far better than to be governed by a party that has always prioritised its own narrow, destructive agenda - and now appears to be hell-bent on taking the country on a road to economic ruin.

References

1. ^ Daily Mail Comment (www.dailymail.co.uk)
2. ^ SNP (www.dailymail.co.uk)