The SNP delivered a message to Keir Starmer on how to govern yesterday. In the Scottish budget announcement, SNP finance minister Shona Robinson announced an end to the two child benefit cap in Scotland and, as the FT put it:
In a Budget that she said “delivers progress”, Robison set out a record £21bn for health and social care, including an extra £2bn for frontline NHS services. She also announced £768mn to fund affordable housing, an £800mn boost in social security benefits, universal winter fuel payments for pensioners and an expansion of free school meals.
I have my doubts at present as to how Robinson will deliver all this given the constraints on Scottish government finances that exist at present, and it is also uncertain whether the SNP will gain sufficient support in the Holyrood Parliament to pass all the budget measures, but the very obvious point that needs to be emphasised is that within these proposals there is a very clear message. That is that the SNP government cares.
It cares about children in poverty.
It cares about the redistribution of income.
It cares about pensioners.
It cares about healthcare.
It cares about those struggling to find a home.
And it cares about green issues.
How much it cares is constrained by Westminster.
What it can achieve will be constrained by deal making in Holyrood.
But, it has a story to tell. Not everyone will like it. The Tories will hate it. Labour's puppet leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, will squirm when trying to reconcile his position (and opposition) to this with the need to appeal to the electorate in Scotland and simultaneously appease London.
But the audience for the SNP with this budget is people in Scotland, and the message being delivered is one that is the opposite of the far-right agenda of callous, deliberate indifference. The opposite to that far-right agenda is a caring agenda. The SNP has delivered that.
Keir Starmer should take note. He will talk about his ‘missions' today and no-one will care because no one (Starmer included) seems to know what those missions are, and no one will care if GDP is 0.3 per cent higher or lower. What they want is a government that cares, and on the issues that the SNP has highlighted, Labour very obviously does not care.
I am not saying the SNP had got everything right. But its messaging is both clever, and believable. John Swinney is not the most inspiring of politicians. But he said children and the relief of poverty were his goals and he is walking his talk. That is what a competent politician does.
Starmer is nowhere near competent.
If the SNP can deliver this agenda Labour's brief return to favour in Scotland will not last for long.
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[…] suggested in another post this morning that Labour does not care. I should have made clear, it does not care about people. It […]
Good for Scotland I say.
Thank you, Richard.
Richard mentions Anas Sarwar. Fun fact about the Sarwar clan: They celebrate Pakistan’s independence in Pakistan or London every August, but deny the older homeland (?) that is Scotland this right.
“Keir Starmer… will talk about his ‘missions’ today…”
Apparently he’s moved on to “milestones”, which will be how we measure delivery of the missions. “a bobby on every corner” etc. (hopefully not wearing full body armour)
They sound like a gift to cartoonists, as Starmer staggers along a rocky road with Reeves, past a series of “MacSweeney’s milestones”.
Clearly the “Edstone” is being recycled.
I wonder what the milestone for railway nationalisation will say? DoT have already told us not to expect lower fares.
This is all such drivel from Starner
The SNP have proved themselves to be corrupt and incompetent. Not sure this is the right horse to back Richard. Or maybe it is the only horse offering you a ride?
I was not backing them, as I made clear
I was saying that they are better than Labour
It’s a low bar
In any definition of “corruption” or “incompetence”, as Richard suggests, where are you placing the bar? The problem with your too-easy, glib dismissal of a policy (there is a social policy at stake here), is that the only current public measure of “corruption” or “incompetence” we have for comparison, is that suppled by the Labour and Conservative governments.
I leave you to mount some defence of what passes for standards or competence of Government in Britain; because the last twenty years of British failure have enabled Putin (grotesquely, ever since at least the Litvinenko assassination – which was all the warning needed, but ignored), undermined the EU and destroyed our economy (to go no further into egregious corruption of the body politic displayed by the government of Covid, the blood scandal, Grenfell or the Post Office – to provide only the most egregious from a much longer list, over which no government in Scotland has had control or responsibility, save in realising just how bad, how low the bar set by Britain could be, or how much they have to do).
Your presumptive arrogance, given where we are, and what has been done in Britain is merely illustrative of the scale of Scotland’s real problem.
Nice of an ex-Man Utd player to take such a keen interest in Scottish politics, especially from South Korea, where he’s playing these days.
Lingard might just be a footballer currently playing in Japan
That occurred to me after this was posted
Now blocked
Everything doesn’t have to be binary.
It isn’t a horse race.
The SNP can be a corrupt government but they can have a more progressive set of policies than Labour or the Tories. Noting that doesn’t mean I have to approve of corruption. But it does clarify what I want to see on offer politically.
I’m voting green at present, but that doesn’t mean I don’t acknowledge their failings and want to see change.
It’s a bit like geopolitics – we see every international situation through a binary filter – Russia/America or Israel/Iran or EU/USA or North/South or Fossil Fuel/Climate.
I’ve had enough of that in domestic politics and religion. “Die heretic!!” has never seemed a particularly constructive way to start a dialogue with people we disagree with.
Two very big solutions were reached when people reached beyond that – to find a “better but not perfect” compromise, requiring creativity, courage and conviction. South Africa and Northern Ireland. Lots still to do, but also – lots of lives saved and improved.
🙂
Very well said, if I may be allowed to say.
BBC Radio Scotland is running a phone-in on the cap this morning; the framing of it is provided by the Scottish Conservative spin that the current benefits bill is unsustainable, and some low-pay charity workers claiming it just makes life harder for families. They could set it off on that foot because BBC Radio Scotland GMS had already set up that agenda by interviewing a Conservative and found a charity worker with that view; and presented it as National News. The elderly Scottish Conservatives are now prompted to phone in.
Everybody outside Pacific Quay meanwhile knows that the real news surrounding this issue is – where is Anas Sarwar and Scottish Labour?
Ending the 2-child cap on benefits in Scotland can be scuppered by Scotland’s English government since the Department of Work and Pensions holds the necessary data which will be required to ensure payments reach the families.
It will be interesting to see if that caring, sharing Starmer government blocks our Scottish government’s attempts to end child poverty in our own country.
Starmer has commented on the Scottish government’s plan to end the 2-child cap on benefits in Scotland. He said ending the cap wasn’t a “silver bullet”. But it’s better than having a cap on child benefits at all, eh Starmer?
From his speech today: ‘On education Starmer promises to ensure a record proportion of five-year-olds starting school “ready to learn” to give children “the best start in life”. This is a new pledge by the PM.’
Children will learn better if they don’t go to school hungry, you pillock of a Prime Minister. The “best start in life” is having children living and learning free from poverty.
Scotland’s government is hamstrung by Westminster governments, whether LINO or Tory but at least it tries, with limited resources, to do the right thing by its people. What does Starmer & Co., actually do for the UK public – sweet f-all, that’s what.
Much to agree with
The irony of Starmer talking about “silver bullets” is that not only are there no silver bullets, but the only people in Britain who ever believed in silver bullets were those who voted Labour in the General Election, for any other reason than simply, finally to dispose of a toxic, rotten Conservative Government and Party (hopefully for good); and at virtually any price; and now they are paying the full price for that solution.
What Starmer and Reeves don’t seem to realise is that it’s too late. They have already blown it. We, the public are not listening. 90% of us switched off after Reeves cut the pensioners winter fuel payments and the final 10% when we discovered you don’t buy your own clothes