Tavish Scott: For all parties it’s still the economy, stupid

So ED Miliband doesn’t like bankers. His speech to the party faithful in Liverpool this week suggested he wasn’t too keen on business per se. He had to spend Wednesday in the television and radio studios denying any anti-business agenda. A politician defined by a question that he answers in the negative is not off to a great start.

Polls say the electorate are unsure of Mr Miliband, but that’s not surprising. No-one in Britain knew Paddy Ashdown before the 1992 general election and Nick Clegg was unknown before the TV leaders debates last year. So Mr Miliband’s profile will improve, but he will be defined by all things economic and financial because that is the battleground until the next election. So as Bill Clinton’s campaign team observed, it is the economy, stupid. Any leader’s speech needs a heavy, worthy, serious and tough passage on all things financial.

Carving out a niche as a serious man for serious times has to be the approach. Not as a “quiet man” as Iain Duncan Smith sought to suggest, because the public will yawn and move on. But there is a position in UK politics to rigorously and intellectually challenge the deficit reduction plan of the UK government and it is a debate the country needs.

The Ed Balls and Alex Salmond blunderbuss approach of saying whatever the UK coalition does is wrong doesn’t wash, because the electorate are smarter than that. No-one likes the cuts, but everyone knows that the government has to deal with the financial mess.

UK voters have seen the Greek prime minister in Berlin begging for assistance from the all-powerful Germans. Yet Angela Merkel’s government has lost seven out of eight regional elections in recent months and helping Greece isn’t popular.

Imagine the circumstances where the UK requested a financial bailout as Greece, Portugal and Ireland have done. Britain’s attitude, actions and slights towards Europe over the last 40 years would be remembered.

Consider, too, the realpolitik of Conservative politics at Westminster, where the Eurosceptic Bill Cash tendency has been emboldened by the MP intake of 2010. They are more right-wing and more Eurosceptic than before. What chance David Cameron with his own party had the UK gone cap in hand to Brussels? The government would have fallen, split internally not between coalition parties but within the Conservatives.

So a serious alternative would be good for politics across the UK. If Mr Miliband looked financially credible and economically literate then Salmond becomes the only figure playing politics with the deficit. The Nationalists’ “MacPlan” looks risible after their budget and the reality of higher business taxes choking off Scottish growth.

Their advocacy of greater corporation tax powers will now be seen for what it is by Scottish business. Far from Scotland being a lower-tax environment, look at the record of the Scottish Government’s budget, which over the next three years will raise tax. What happened to the great Salmond principle of consultation with business before any change in taxation?

He rightly said the UK government should have talked to the North Sea oil and gas industry before raising their taxes in the UK Budget in March. Salmond then argued in Aberdeen, during the international Offshore Europe Exhibition, that there should be statutory pre-taxation consultation. If that approach is right for the UK government, why is it forgotten when Mr Salmond announces his own business tax rises?

All this shows a gap in the political market for a serious alternative. That gap is up for grabs.

l Tavish Scott is Liberal Democrat MSP for Shetland