Leader: Confidence needs to be accompanied by prudence

AFTER a momentous year, few would grudge First Minister Alex Salmond a touch of triumphalism in his New Year message.

He led the SNP to a sensational victory in the Holyrood election, one that delivered the party an unprecedented overall majority. The result has reverberated across the UK, put the independence referendum centre stage and greatly raised the profile and the standing of Scotland’s First Minister. This has culminated in Mr Salmond’s nomination as 2011 “Briton of the Year”: hardly a title he would readily embrace, but its award is a deserved recognition of his domination of Scottish political life.

Much of his New Year message is given over to an affirmation of the case for independence and his confidence that Scots will decide “to take full control of our own destiny and join the international community in our own right”. The problem he faces, however, is that the year ahead is likely to be dominated by issues other than constitutional change, in particular by an epochal challenge to our economic security and well-being.

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The First Minister talks of an “obsession with austerity at all costs” as if market confidence in sovereign debt had no relevance to our predicament, while his party routinely blames retrenchment on some malevolent agenda of “the London-based parties”.

The truth, as wiser counsels within the SNP well grasp, runs deeper than this and deserves a more mature recognition. No country can expect to have its debt routinely funded while government absorbs so much of our national wealth. Retrenchment today is the necessary price for a health and welfare system for our children tomorrow. Mr Salmond does mention the need for employment and skills training. But it is a subsidiary preoccupation rather than the principal concern it needs to be.

It is the magnitude of the debt and deficit threat to wealth and prosperity across the West that now compels priority attention, and the need to encourage private sector investment and expansion if we are to have a future worth a referendum vote at all.

While there are specific issues which have given rise to criticism, the SNP administration has shown itself broadly capable of governing competently. Indeed, it is this claim to competence on which its hopes best rest for a strong performance in May’s council elections. Barring some unforeseeable mishap, 2012 should see a further advance for the SNP as it continues to score against an untried and inexperienced opposition leadership.

This may give the illusion of optimism and self-confidence the First Minister is keen to promote. In truth, it may hide a profound uncertainty and insecurity as unemployment mounts, investment is stalled and more firms go under. Mr Salmond has a duty in these circumstances to accentuate the positive. But a positive economy is going to require much more than a triumphant First Minister’s say-so.