SNP ruse of blaming Westminster has long been wearing thin

The SNP currently enjoys unique status in UK politics. It is, simultaneously, a party of government and of opposition.

For almost two decades, SNP politicians have lived a double life in which they hold office at Holyrood while, relentlessly, attacking the Government at Westminster for the state in which Scotland finds itself.

It’s hardly surprising that this should be so. For so long as the Union endures, the UK Government – whether Labour, Conservative or coalition – will always be the great enemy.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer talks with First Minister John Swinney during the first Council of Nations and Regions, at Queen Elizabeth House in Edinburgh. Picture: Andy Buchanan-WPA Pool/Getty Images

This inevitability means that, since coming to power at Holyrood in 2007, the SNP has taken credit for Scotland’s successes while blaming Westminster for its failures.

If this or that SNP policy collapses, Scottish ministers may be depended upon to point the finger south. They talk of budget cuts and declare only independence will allow Scotland to flourish.

For a long time, this message chimed loudly with a substantial number of Scottish voters.

It was the SNP’s great fortune to have first won power a year before the global financial crash. For much of the nationalists’ first term, then First Minister Alex Salmond was able to tell a compelling story of a crisis created on Labour’s watch.

When Prime Minister Gordon Brown was replaced by Conservative David Cameron in 2010, Salmond had a new twist on the same story. Now Scotland was paying the price of Tory “austerity”.

By the time Salmond was leading Yes Scotland during 2014’s independence referendum campaign, Tory and Labour governments at Westminster were characterised by nationalists as identical. The charge that Labour politicians were “red Tories” may not have been sophisticated but it cut through to a substantial number of voters.

But the SNP explanation for its failures – a big government did it and ran away – has been wearing thin for some time.

Take, for example, the ludicrously undeveloped “plan” for a National Care Service.

Announced by former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, the care service was to be the solution to the problem of increased pressure on the NHS caused by expanding demands on geriatric services.

Nobody thought this a bad idea. Medical staff have been warning for decades of the impact of under-investment in – and lack of reform of – the NHS. A properly developed and fully-funded care service would be a very good thing indeed.

Unfortunately, Sturgeon’s blueprint for this new service went little further than its name. There was – and remains – little detail of how it might be structured. And, crucially, ministers are still unable to say how much a National Care Service would cost.

Opposition parties and trade unions are now firmly against the SNP proposal on the entirely reasonable grounds that, as things stand, the NCS is a catastrophe in gestation and Westminster had nothing to do with its conception.

The SNP’s strategy of blaming Westminster when things go on the fritz was further undermined last week by chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Delivering the first Labour budget in 14 years, Reeves announced an immediate £1.4 billion bailout for the Scottish Government to be followed by a £3.4bn increase to Holyrood’s annual budget.

The SNP’s claim of continued “austerity” under Labour is now stripped of any potency it may once have held.

During First Minister’s Question Time on Thursday, First Minister John Swinney decided to play it straight when questioned by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar on the impact of the budget. Swinney welcomed measures announced while, of course, regretting some omissions.

There are political wins to be had by Labour regardless of how well the SNP uses the extra billions being sent north by the Treasury. If the Scottish Government can show that it has put the money to good use then Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will be entitled to claim some of the credit. If – and I suspect this is a more likely outcome – the Scottish Government is not able to demonstrate it has made good, effective use of its increased budget, Labour will go into the 2026 Holyrood election campaign demanding “how the hell did you squander all that money?”.

Since the SNP leader accepted there won’t be a second independence referendum any time soon, he has struggled to define, precisely, a political vision. Swinney is a single purpose politician and, without the constitutional fight, he seems lost.

This is no state to be in when being asked to gamble with billions of pounds.

If the SNP remains true to itself, we will see some of this money gift-wrapped then handed to us as “progressive” policy. The nationalists won great support in the past for giving free prescriptions to the better off and scrapping university tuition fees so I’m certain special advisers and ministers are now chattering about what freebie might come attached to the cover of their 2026 Holyrood election manifesto.

Labour has already made clear its view that the SNP should use the extra money to tackle problems in the NHS. We already know, thanks to opinion poll after opinion poll, that health service is a major concern for voters so the pressure is on the First Minister to improve it and to do so in a way that is both quick and demonstrable. I wish him luck with that.

I wonder whether, in moments of quiet contemplation, the First Minister has already come to regret the chancellor’s largesse. After all, for the first time in a long time, his party has lost the power to blame Westminster for Scotland’s woes. Not only that, he will also have to, somehow, show us that his government has spent this new money wisely.

In order to achieve that objective, Swinney will require – as the bare minimum – a deliverable policy idea. There is no sign, whatsoever, that such a thing currently exists in the minds of Scottish ministers.

After years of successive leaders of the SNP pack demanding huge sums of money from the UK Government, perhaps John Swinney is the dog that caught the car.