SNP ministers come up with a convenient excuse

nder Alex Salmond, the Scottish National Party has successfully pursued a gradualist strategy of moving towards independence, which involved taking every opportunity to accrue new powers to Holyrood, while continuing to espouse the cause of a fully sovereign Scotland. Although there was once substantial opposition to this from the fundamentalist wing within the SNP, the Salmond approach is now accepted by most Nationalists – and for good reason as they have progressed from a minor party of protest to the government of devolved Scotland.

It is therefore puzzling to say the least that the SNP Scottish Government is now threatening to block what would be the most significant transfer of power from London to Holyrood since the advent of devolution, a plan contained in the Scotland Bill currently going through Westminster which would give MSPs the power to raise a substantial amount of money, using a proportion of income tax levied north of the Border.

The supposed reason for the threat to this measure – which the SNP had up until now supported, albeit with serious reservations – was the apparent inability of the Scottish Secretary Michael Moore to outline to a Holyrood committee precisely what impact handing over this power would have on the block grant which comes to Scotland from the UK Treasury.

Such a lack of detail is unsatisfactory, and the Scotland Office, which came up with this plan based on the Calman Commission, must surely be able to calculate an estimate.

However, the huffing and puffing of indignation expressed by John Swinney at Mr Moore’s failure to be precise had more than a whiff of synthetic anger about it, as the SNP can equally be charged with a failure to come up with financial details on the policy of independence, which the finance secretary yesterday admitted (oddly at the third time of asking) was his party’s overriding priority for its five-year term in government.

Furthermore, even in terms of its ideas for increasing Holyrood’s powers, the SNP is not in a strong position to criticise others for lack of clarity with the figures it produced yesterday, claiming that a reduction in corporation tax equivalent to a fall from 23 per cent to 20 per cent would lead to an increase in the level of Scottish GDP by 1.4 per cent and 27,000 new jobs after 20 years – a helplessly optimistic prediction based on a series of distinctly questionable assumptions.

For all the SNP’s protestation, the suspicion remains that the Scottish Government simply does not relish the prospect of having power over a tax, namely income tax, which it might be difficult to increase as it is most highly visible to most people in employment.

SNP ministers, it appears, have simply come up with a convenient excuse to object to something politically difficult and which impedes their dream of independence.