Better Nation

Due to a very busy schedule yesterday evening (chiefly involving a business Lord and eight entertaining contestants), I never did get to see the Holyrood battle over SvR. Given that probably keeps me in line with the majority of Scots and there’s little else to be said on the matter, I’m not going to worry too much about it (particularly as my chance to view it tonight is scuppered by going to watch Andy Murray at the O2!)

I am concerned however about the noises the Swinney’s problems will have consequences for the budget. That’s a dark road where only trouble and strife may lie, for the Parliament and Scotland as a whole. Ironically, it is Patrick Harvie, the only party leader who actually wanted to use the tax-varying powers, who has made the clearest call from amongst the Opposition parties to move on from the issue and look forward afresh. Iain MacWhirter is in delightfully scathing mode about the petty games being played –

““The greatest act of political sabotage since devolution,” according to Andy Kerr. Get a life.” Indeed.

There’s a pattern in business that many like to employ where you do a bit of planning, do a lot of work and then stop and ‘take stock’. I reckon that’s the stage that the Scottish Parliament should be approaching, if not today on the highly-charged First Minister’s Questions, then at least Friday or over the weekend.

Scotland has an economy that is lagging behind the rest of the UK, unemployment going up when the rest of the UK’s is going down, a huge opportunity with renewable energy if it can just find some investment capital, a big decision to make over how the next generation of graduates is funded, a growing reputation as a tourism hot-spot and a huge looming debate over how it funds its devolved self. I’ve no doubt only scratched the surface of where Scotland is and what it should be talking to itself about but I do hope I’ve at least made the point that SvR should be way, way down the list of priorities.

Let’s just hope that, against the backdrop of a nerve-jangling election contest, enough MSPs can push beyond partisan temptations and deliver a top drawer financial plan for the year ahead that will stand us in good stead for the next parliamentary term to come. More back-scratching and less back-stabbing.

There’s no avoiding a budget being quid pro quo, but it shouldn’t be tit-for-tat.

(I can’t speak for my fellow editors but I suspect this’ll be my last post to touch on SvR)

Today’s apology expression of regret from the Finance Secretary will be a fitting conclusion to a muddle that now no longer needs to take up much more of the Chamber’s time.

To agree that an apology is appropriate is not necessarily to say that the SNP were wrong to stand up to HMRC’s demands. An alternative Scottish Government may well have meekly acceded to the requests for £7m of money from the taxman. The SNP stood firm but were unable to thread the accompanying political needle and were apparently unwilling to be sufficiently upfront about the situation. Today’s discomfiture is the small price they must pay for this error.

It has been suggested that the Nats would have been apoplectic with fury had an alternative Scottish Government done the same. This is not entirely convincing and perhaps even seeks to make a caricature of the independence campaign. Sure, there would have been pragmatic synthetic outrage and genuine indignation that they’d been kept out of the loop for so long and misled in Parliament, as other parties are currently expressing, but in the current context, anyone would do well to be truly seething about saving money for a power that looks unlikely to ever be used.

There is good news and bad news to take from this. The Scottish Government has helped to set Scotland’s stall out against paying for any fixed costs that may emanate from the Scotland Bill, which could be published as early as St Andrew’s Day next week. This is as it should be, as clearly stated in the Scotland Act, the very basis of Scottish devolution and the Parliament.

The bad news is the SNP’s perceived lack of understanding around ‘wooden dollars’ that need to flow between entities within an organisation. There’s a thin line between negotiating for a better deal and just not playing the game as it needs to be played in order to work as it should. Don’t pay the £7m for an IT system you thought you’d already paid for, sure, we can all get onboard with that, but why was the measly £50k cancelled way back in 2007? The SNP, for obvious reasons, has questions over whether it can be a team player in a UK context. This episode gives a slight hint that the party can come up short on occasion.

However, this is of minor and, as the First Minister put it, “academic” concern so hopefully the Green Party’s calls for resignations can now be quietly brushed aside as there are sufficient facts in the open and an apology today aimed at drawing a line under the issue. This is no David Laws moment after all.

There is a budget to pass, a budget that would leave Scotland £1bn in the red if it failed, and John Swinney’s deft manoeuvrings in years gone by testify that he is the right person for this task.

Apologise and move on. It worked for Nicola Sturgeon, it should work for John Swinney too.