Tories’ £123m demand to strike Budget deal with SNP
THE Scottish Conservatives have set out red lines to ensure more money for police, councils and tackling drugs deaths in return for not blocking the SNP’s Budget.
The party is also calling for no further tax hikes.
The Tories held talks with new Finance Secretary Kate Forbes last week and presented her with four conditions that must be met to secure further talks about backing plans on spending. They include:
• No further tax divergence with the UK, along with a commitment that if the UK Government eases the tax burden, the SNP will follow suit;
• A minimum of £95 million more for councils;
• A minimum of £13 million more for Police Scotland;
• Another 15.4 million more for drugs rehab beds.
The demands would require an additional £123.4 million from the Budget – a further 0.3 per cent. Even then, it is understood that the Tories would be unlikely to vote in support of the Budget, but would abstain, allowing it to pass.
The Tories are confident that a deal can be struck, and believe their proposals are more palatable than those of the Scottish Greens, whose support the Scottish Government usually relies on.
The Greens have demanded a halt to popular infrastructure projects, including much-needed improvements to the congested Sheriffhall roundabout in Edinburgh.
Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Donald Cameron said: ‘These are our red lines which the SNP must not cross if it wants us to continue discussions.
‘We don’t think these are unreasonable or unaffordable demands – with the right choices they could be funded now. The people of Scotland do not want to see the government going into business with an increasingly extreme and damaging Green party.’
More talks are set to take place next week, before a stage one debate on the Budget on Thursday.
The Scottish Government refused to be drawn on which party it would try to secure support from to get its spending plans through Holyrood.
A spokesman said: ‘We are prioritising actions that have the greatest impact on improving lives.
‘Not only do our proposals provide a fair funding settlement for councils, they also maintain our fairer tax system and deliver a record investment in health and care. Our spending plans will also support low-income households which are being hit hardest by the UK Government’s benefit cuts.’
LAST week saw the march of the Labour zombies – those undead souls who continue to tread the Earth after their political time has ended. Former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were on separate stages telling potential successors how to win again. In Mr Blair’s case, he advises going back to ‘first principles’ of Labour policy, while Mr Brown made his bi-annual speech declaring devolution to be ailing, therefore we need more devolution.
By my reckoning, this speech is now into the eighth year of its run, with Tories rather than Nationalists ever the target, without a single hard question by the speaker – one of the architects of the devolution settlement and under whose watch at least one revision occurred – positing whether any culpability might lie closer to home.
As to the future of the Labour Party? Well, that had a decidedly retro feel, too. The leadership frontrunner Sir Keir Starmer suggested that previous leader Ed Miliband could be brought back into the shadow cabinet.
There was even some briefing that the shadow chancellor role might be a good fit.
That’s the same Ed Miliband who, after using union votes in the electoral college to knife his brother against the support of the parliamentary and voluntary parties, then rewrote the Labour rule book, ushering in the Jeremy Corbyn era of leadership.
With more than a month of the leadership campaign still to go, Mr Corbyn remains leader.
Even though he hasn’t gone anywhere, at least two contenders tip him for a comeback.
Rebecca Long-Bailey says she will happily put him in her shadow cabinet, while deputy leadership contender Richard Burgon said he would specifically offer Mr Corbyn the shadow foreign secretary role.
Presumably because Mr Corbyn proved such a patriotic votewinner for middle Britain with his approach to Russia’s attack on the UK during the Skripal poisoning case, his fondness for calling terrorists ‘friends’, his general support for the IRA and his penchant for being ‘present but not involved’ in laying wreaths at ceremonies honouring terror attackers.
A newspaper sketchwriter recently described Mr Burgon as the sort of person who ‘would wear an “I’m with stupid” T-shirt while sitting on his own’.
ITHOUGHT the description a touch harsh but if he is serious about prolonging a Corbyn foreign policy campaign, then it was generous in the extreme. Labour has lost four general elections in a row.
Gordon Brown lost. Ed Miliband lost. Jeremy Corbyn lost. Then he lost again. In December’s election, Labour recorded its worst result since 1935.
Part of the criticism levelled at each of these failed campaigns was that the party did not lay out credible plans that spoke to modern Britain about how the party would build a better future for the country. I know it’s not in my interests to stop opponents as they shoot themselves in the foot, but is it too much to point out that the answer to your problems seldom lies in calling for the return of those who have failed?
Politics moves quickly and voters are far more interested in what you are going to do for them tomorrow rather than your criticism of what someone else did yesterday.
Each candidate is talking to an industrial past which doesn’t represent the present day.
For a party of the workers to have so comprehensively lost its working class voter base to the Conservatives in December to indulge in nostalgia campaigning and republican posturing is an absolute tragedy for the health of our democracy. People are more worried about educational and job opportunities than whether Sir Keir would repeal a trade union act or Lisa Nandy would abolish the monarchy.
A manifesto of mass renationalisation and a colonial legacy audit just got a thumbs down from voters all over Britain.
Labour need to look to policies – and people – able to build future success instead of retreating into the comfort of past failures.