Boris Johnson’s ‘New Deal’ cash must be wisely spent – leader comment

UK and Scottish governments must work together to ensure stimulus spending delivers long-term economic benefits.

Will Boris Johnson's New Deal live up to his rhetoric? (Picture: Heathcliff O'Malley/pool/AFP via Getty Images)

There is a considerable political consensus that, such is the dire state of our economy amid the blight of Covid-19, major government spending is needed to get the country back on its feet again – over and above the billions already spent.

Announcing what he called a New Deal for Britain – deliberately referencing Franklyn Roosevelt’s much larger programme of building works that helped lift America out of the Great Depression in the 1930s – Boris Johnson stressed he was “not a communist”. A statement that Conservative politicians don’t usually feel the need to make.

As Roosevelt’s example showed, a stimulus can be an effective strategy, but it is also a risky one. The Government will need to spend the money wisely because if it does not, the country may find itself with an ailing economy and large debts that it may struggle to pay off.

The dualling of the A1 announced by Johnson is an eminently sensible scheme, given how important a link it is between Scotland and England, and will increase pressure on Scotland to follow suit. In addition to making this busy road safer, it should speed up journey times and reduce delays with the associated economic benefits. Other schemes that could be added to a shopping list of stimulus projects for Scotland that make sense in the long-term include the creation of a high-speed rail link between Edinburgh and Glasgow, speeding up the rollout of superfast broadband, and measures to help the ongoing switch from fossil fuels to electricity, particularly in transport and household heating.

Judging by the rhetoric in Johnson’s speech, it sounds like all of these ideas would meet a favourable response. One potential problem in ensuring that Scotland receives the same level of stimulus as the rest of the UK and that the money is spent on the most suitable schemes is the all-too-often rocky relationship between Edinburgh and London.

Given some spending will fall under the Scottish Government’s control, some under the UK’s, there is a risk that a dispute about whether projects should be branded with a Union Jack or Saltire could affect our governments’ ability to make the wisest decisions about where to invest taxpayers’ money.

We don’t really care who takes the credit and suspect the public doesn’t either. Given the extent of the crisis facing the country, both Scotland and the UK, we hope, perhaps against hope, that the political consensus about the need for action can be translated into effective co-operation in the public interest.

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