SNP's performance: 'The Nats have had little to worry about'

Published on Monday 19 May 2008 09:04

LOOKING back on his first 12 months as First Minister, Alex Salmond reasonably concludes it has been "a good year".

The SNP minority government may still be under fire over its "broken promises" – such as writing off student debt, matching the school building programme and cutting class sizes – but the party is still riding high in the opinion polls.

And Mr Salmond can point to tangible achievements, including the abolition of tolls on the Forth Road Bridge, scrapping the graduate endowment fee and starting to phase out prescription charges.

These may be "easy" and "populist" measures, as the opposition parties claim, but they are ones which people can easily recognise and ones which have been put in place without delay or prevarication.

Mr Salmond and his colleagues also seem to have succeeded in creating a "feel-good" factor in Scotland and the Government has been helped in establishing a good reputation for itself by the poor performance and disarray of Labour. Governing without a majority should have been a lot harder for the SNP, but there has been so little agreement or effective co-ordination among the opposition parties that it has had little to worry about.

However, if opinion polls are to be believed, the Nationalists are failing on one significant front – persuading people to back their key objective of Scottish independence.

Despite the continuing popularity of the First Minister and the SNP, a survey at the end of last week put support for independence at just 31 per cent, down to 25 per cent in a multi-option choice, while the idea of "more powers" for Holyrood won 50 per cent backing.

Mr Salmond's declared strategy is to make a success of running Scotland under devolution in order to convince people independence would be even better. But so far that is not the lesson the public seems to be drawing from the SNP's achievements.

Looking ahead, there are big challenges for the Government and the real possibility of failure on two of its flagship policies – its proposed Scottish Futures Trust (SFT), intended as an alternative to PFI for funding major projects, and its plans to scrap the council tax in favour of a local income tax. The plans for the SFT have been widely criticised by experts and there is no majority in parliament for a local income tax scheme.

Mr Salmond can celebrate his first year – but he must know the honeymoon won't last for ever.