SNP settling scores

REMEMBER how SNP bigwig Jim Sillars threatened ‘a day of reckoning’ for businesses who had the temerity to point out the manifold pitfalls of separation?

That was postponed in light of the SNP’s solid defeat in September’s referendum but the politics of revenge is alive and well in SNP ranks.

How else to explain such gems as a pledge to reintroduce the 50p tax rate for the very highest earners?

Figures confirm the overall tax-take rose when the Tories scrapped the high rate, but that’s just another inconvenient fact to be ignored as the SNP’s self-righteous battlewagon takes to the moral high ground. Similarly, the abolition of the House of Lords is so urgent that it must, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon declared at the weekend, take place even before the shape of any elected second chamber can be considered,

There seems to be more class warrior than statesman about that sort of back-ofan-envelope constitutional politics.

And the man with the longest memory for slights, both real and perceived, is Alex Salmond. Miss Sturgeon feels the need to constantly remind us that she is in charge as he continues to act as though he were still running things.

His latest bid to enforce payback is to demand BBC ‘bias’ be countered by the state broadcaster being brought to heel by Holyrood (and given the party’s majority, for ‘Holyrood’ read ‘the SNP’).

All this from a conference which endorsed a diktat to silence criticism of the party from within and which – behind closed doors – agreed to all-women candidate shortlists.

The SNP look less like a party preparing to take the reins of power at Westminster t han a Mafia clan e mbroiled in score-settling.