Leader: SNP opposition risks undermining its own budget

TODAY, after many months of detailed consideration, the fate of the Scotland Bill is on a knife edge. Under its provisions, sweeping new powers would be transferred to Holyrood.

But the bill could now fall victim to what its supporters regard as wrecking amendments from the SNP – the very party that has clamoured longest for such a transfer.

It seems perverse that the same party that has crusaded for a transfer of extra powers to Scotland should baulk now at this late stage in the legislative process. There is a logic here of sorts. The SNP could be held to have a political interest in frustrating legislation that falls short of the full agenda it has long advocated. Defeating the bill would sharpen the contrast between that agenda and the status quo, making it easier to brand its opponents as inflexible unionists, reluctant to concede a morsel of further power to Holyrood. In truth, the opposite is the case. The Scotland Bill has been forged and formulated by a coalition of Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats. What’s changed is that the SNP secured a sweeping victory in May, which handed it an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament. It thus has the power to polarise discussion and to present the alternative to the independence manifesto as something other than it is. As such, it opens the SNP to the charge of party political manoeuvring and, at worst, of creating a political stand-off that allows for no middle way between the powers the parliament has at present and the “full Monty” SNP programme.

The result is an argument so contorted as to squeeze logic beyond its limits. The SNP argues that the powers contained in the bill are not “fit for purpose”, that its provisions do not go far enough and that, according to Linda Fabiani, the SNP convener of Holyrood’s Scotland Bill committee, “its provisions, if enacted, represent a significant risk to public finances in Scotland”.

This is a strange and bewildering calculus. The SNP now asks the public to accept that what has been described as the biggest transfer of financial powers for 300 years should be considered potentially harmful – while a further advance down exactly the same route would be radically efficacious. At what point exactly along the Fabiani Continuum does the transfer of additional powers mysteriously mutate from “significant risk” to totally positive? It is the SNP’s equivalent of the search for Higgs boson: if logic is spotted at the end of this tunnel, someone should shout “Eureka!”

Of more immediate concern is that SNP opposition at this stage puts in jeopardy the increase in borrowing powers that is a major component of the party’s plans for billions of pounds of additional capital investment spending outlined in public barely a week ago. Without these powers the plans are sunk. The SNP must take care that its stance on the Scotland Bill does not shoot away a major part of its own economic recovery programme.