As SNP economic guru Andrew Wilson calls for rethink of disastrous Budget, it's time for nationalist politicians who care about Scotland to act – Murdo Fraser

SNP politicians need to stop the Scottish Government’s economic fantasies from hurting real businesses and real lives

Since they came to power 16 years ago, the SNP have used the Budget to create dividing lines with their political opponents. If there was one issue with which other parties disagreed, the SNP would spin that it proved they also opposed the ‘good things’ they were doing, even if they didn’t. They started raising taxes to try to assert that ‘Scottish values’ differed from those in the rest of the UK.

But this year Deputy First Minister Shona Robison has surpassed herself. She has created dividing lines within her own party. She has divided her administration from almost every public body interested in the nation’s finances. Crucially, she has divided herself from economic sense and reality.

Her strategy was built on a lie. The idea that she has to increase taxes because of that old trope ‘Tory austerity’ is simply untrue. The Scottish Government’s budget is today at record levels, and public spending in Scotland is more than £2,000 per head higher each year than in England, thanks to fiscal transfers. The reason there is a black hole in the nation’s finances is because the SNP have dug one.

Humza Yousaf and Finance Secretary Shona Robison should learn from former Labour Chancellor Denis Healey about what to do when you're in a hole (Picture: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)

Creating a new tax band for higher earners and dragging 100,000 ordinary Scots – teachers, nurses, police officers – into paying higher rates of tax will not fill it. Scotland having twice the number of tax bands as the rest of the UK is a sign of fiscal incompetence, not social justice.

SNP critics of Budget

One of the major problems that the Scottish tax base has is that we have too few higher earners to tax. We need to encourage more to come to Scotland, not give them a barrier to coming, and those already here a reason to leave. Those Ms Robison describes as having “the broadest shoulders” tend also to be those who are most fleet of foot.

By doing all of this, she has united almost every business group in the country together with every local authority. Even the man who was tasked with determining the economic policy for independence has condemned her plans. Former SNP MSP Andrew Wilson has broken his silence as a banker with Santander to demand an “urgent rethink” before “material damage” is done to the economy. He wasn’t the only SNP critic. Humza Yousaf’s leadership rival Kate Forbes didn’t need to reach for her calculator to work out the Budget was a disaster, but perhaps reached for her inch tape to measure the curtains for Bute House.

We should be in no doubt about how damaging this Budget – the latest in a succession of damaging Budgets – is to Scotland. The lesson the SNP have not learned is that raising taxes is not the same as raising revenue. Devolving income tax has actually cut Scotland’s revenue, and raising it higher will not reverse that.

You cannot claim that raising tax on higher earners is a matter of “social justice” when it means less money to spend on the people who need it most. This Budget means higher taxes for the rich and poorer services for those who rely on them most. It is a complete abandonment of the economic strategy which Alex Salmond built his reputation on.

Salmond used to argue that a separate Scotland would cut taxes lower than the rest of the UK, and praying the Laffer Curve in aid, that it would result in higher revenues and more public spending. It was the kind of thinking that attracted support from people like Sir George Mathewson and Jim McColl. Now that has been replaced not by an economic strategy but by a crude PR plan to try to emphasise imagined differences with the rest of the UK.

£1.5 billion black hole

Neither Humza Yousaf nor Shona Robison is an original thinker capable of developing bespoke policies to benefit Scotland. Instead, bereft of ideas they look back to measures that may have worked for their predecessors in the past. Thus, in need of something to say to his party conference – and unable to use Nicola Sturgeon’s trick of saying the next referendum is just over the horizon – the current First Minister reached into the bag of golden oldies and pulled out a council tax freeze without any thought, consultation or costings.

As a result, the black hole in the public finances deepened to £1.5 billion. Unable to clamber her way out of that daunting chasm, Ms Robison pivoted to blame ‘Tory austerity’ and to challenge other parties to support her tax rises. But her attempt at political triangulation will result in the strangulation of Scotland’s finances.

In this, they are not even capable of being described as derivative politicians, but poor facsimiles of things that have gone before that they never really understood. Rather than testing their political opponents, the First Minister and his Deputy have challenged their own party to find a backbone.

Every nationalist with a modicum of economic knowledge knows that this Budget is a disaster for Scotland. The question for every SNP MSP and MP is whether their instinct for party discipline is stronger than their care for their country. If they are the patriots they claim to be, they will stop their leadership from inflicting the damage on Scotland that their plans will lead to.

If the SNP have ‘men in grey suits’ – or ‘grey kilts’ – they need to convene now and stop this economic fantasy hurting real businesses, real lives, and causing real pain. Former Labour Chancellor Denis Healey once said that when you are in a hole, you should stop digging. The instinct of Humza Yousaf and Shona Robison is to buy more spades. But unless they are stopped, and soon, we will all find ourselves buried under their folly.

Murdo Fraser is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife