And Hey Presto, with one bound he was free

It WAS almost as if Richard Baker wanted to be a member of the studio audience at the Paul Daniels Magic Show rather than watching John Swinney deliver his budget.

“Let us be clear, there has been no rabbit out of the hat today from Mr Swinney,” said a disappointed Baker, who was evidently expecting some pretty nifty conjuring tricks from the finance secretary.

In adenoidal tones that sounded as if he had caught a dose of the flu off the ailing economy, Labour’s finance spokesman warned the absence of magic wands meant that there was a “great deal of pain” to come.

Lost jobs, cuts to services and budgets were on the way, he said – presumably lamenting that Swinney showed no sign of producing an extra couple of billion from behind someone’s ear.

Even when he finally thought he could see a bit of trickery on the horizon, there was so much gloom it did nothing to raise his spirits.

Referring to the SNP’s plans to get councils to use their borrowing powers to take out loans to boost the economy, Baker moaned: “We don’t believe this is a fiscal stimulus, but rather a sleight of hand.”

Sleight of hand or not, there was little badinage in the Holyrood chamber to lighten the gloom of pay freezes, fags and booze tax (or public health levy), and rising pension contributions.

But things did hot up for a bit when the Conservatives’ Gavin Brown claimed there was some “completely unsubstantiated stuff” in the Swinney budget.

Making great play of the fact he had actually managed to read Swinney’s Scottish Spending Review and Draft Budget document, Brown had the gall to dispute the finance secretary’s figures.

Having done a series of calculations that were incomprehensible to the more innumerate members of the press, Brown denounced the budget as a “shambles”.

It was an accusation that Swinney took great exception to as he rose to his feet amid roars from the SNP benches to demand an apology from Brown.

But the storm disappeared almost as quickly as Debbie McGee can vanish through the trap door in her husband’s wardrobe. Because the reality was that Labour and the Tories were simply bystanders at the John Swinney Budget Show.