A new wave of austerity and a Catch-22 for the SNP

AUGUST; and all across the Edinburgh Fringe, artists from Scotland, the UK and far beyond, most of them young, are providing a masterclass in the profound reasons why the global far right suddenly seems - for at least a few miraculous weeks - to be on the back foot. 

Whether it’s a searing monologue about climate change in California, or a moving and beautiful tribute by Polish colleagues to a non-binary Ukrainian theatre-maker now serving on the front line of war, or a heart-wrenching reflection on the horror of Gaza, or even a desperate cry of rage against food poverty in the UK, the Fringe is, as ever, the place to find a thousand pleas for us to prioritise humanity, compassion and respect over bigotry, cruelty and hatred; and just for a moment, this month, it seems possible that the world might be listening.

Yet although Scotland is currently playing host to one of the world’s greatest arts events, no trace of this wider global context finds its way into the deadly daily grind of Scottish politics, where even funding for the arts - now in desperate need of a radical uplift from the Scottish government - has become little more than a political football kicked between Scotland’s two dominant parties, Labour and the SNP, in their eternal battle over Scotland’s constitutional future.  Instead - as ever - the two parties seem happy to continue their impression of two bald men fighting over - well, not a comb, but a strictly limited set of devolved powers. 

READ MORE: The comical truth about SNP and Labour that they don’t want you to know

Even in the week of the annual release of the GERS figures, for example - which, as ever, show Scotland receiving more in overall spending from the UK government than it can raise in tax - the SNP continues its policy of simply ignoring the difficulties that a newly independent Scotland would face during any transition to independence, and failing - despite the obvious latent potential of Scotland’s economy and resources - to map out any credible route from profound debt to relative solvency. 

And now, with another wave of Westminster austerity thundering down the tracks - featuring Rachel Reeves’s withdrawal of the pensioners’ winter fuel payment, right there on the footplate - the SNP finds itself once again facing the relentless Catch 22 it has been juggling ever since 2010 - i.e. the demand that it balance the Scottish budget while not over-using its limited tax powers, and somehow finding the money to fill all the gaps in the public realm created by the imposition of austerity at Westminster. 

If the SNP in 2024 is exhausted by austerity, and over-inclined to present independence as a panacea, though, then Scottish Labour’s response is arguably even worse, characterised by a tidal wave of negativity and disinformation that simply denies the role of Westminster in setting the parameters of austerity for Scotland, and blames the current Scottish Government for everything from bad weather to UK-wide benefits cuts.

This week, for example, the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar rolled out a two-pronged attack on the SNP which first sought to imply that the winter fuel payment cut was entirely the Scottish Government’s fault - because they technically have the power to reinstate it, although they clearly don’t have the money - and then that if they don’t have the money, it is entirely because of their own “mismanagement”, given Westminster’s largesse in providing Scotland with a higher amount of spending her head than the UK average. 

Now given that that higher public spending has to service not only 8% of the UK population, but a third of the UK’s land mass and almost all of its islands, it’s tempting to say that Anas Sarwar should be careful what he wishes for, as he seek his own chance - come the Scottish elections of 2026 - to try to balance Scotland’s books under the current settlement. 

What can be said, though, is that an anti-SNP attack line which depends on voters simply forgetting what Rachel Reeves said three weeks ago, and blaming Scottish ministers for the winter fuel payment decision, hardly shows much respect for the voters involved; particularly since it’s clear that both the SNP and Labour now face the same critical political problem, which exists at a global level, and urgently needs to be addressed. 

For more than four decades, after all, western economic policy and finance has been dominated by an orthodoxy which sought to reduce the role of the state, and to shift resources from the public realm to the private.  That this has worked well for some is obvious; but now, any politician with social-democratic aspirations has to recognise that the “financial rules” entrenched in this system are forbidding what is now essential public investment, both to preserve the public services and community assets on which our society depends, and to support the urgent transition to a low carbon economy.

Any incoming government of a newly independent Scotland would, under those rules, therefore face the same spending and investment conundrum that is now haunting UK Labour; and that is why both parties should now be turning their backs on their dim-witted and sometimes mendacious sparring over the thin gruel of the Scottish block grant, and seeking to join the global movement to change those rules - and even, in the words of the UN Secretary General, to negotiate a “new Bretton Woods settlement” for our times. 

And of course, their failure to do any such thing is ‘just politics’, hardly likely to stop any time soon. In the case of Labour and the SNP, though, it has a peculiarly absurd and even tragic edge; not only as a betrayal of Scotland’s long tradition of wide-ranging and high-powered political thought, but as a fall-out within the centre left that disempowers us all, and profoundly undermines our chances of achieving the social democratic future for which Scotland has so consistently voted, through thick and thin, for at least the last half century.