A Funny Kind of Social Democracy

The First Minister’s speech to Parliament was significant for, amongst other things, setting out what he clearly hopes will be the dividing lines between Holyrood and Westminster: his “fair society” against David Cameron’s “big society”; a social democratic contract against right wing ideology. It’s a dichotomy that Scottish Labour cannot let take hold, and nor does it have to.

One of the more skilful aspects of the SNP’s first term was managing to retain a popular perception-at least in the central belt-that it was to the left of Labour, whilst having a programme for government which was, to a large extent, built around reducing the sums available to the public purse, through the council tax freeze and the abolition of various charges (all of which disproportionately helped the well off). The SNP managed to appeal to Scotland’s conscience and to its wallet at the same time, blaming any shortcomings in public services on the “one thousant, three hunnert million” pounds of cuts Westminster was imposing on the Scottish budget. And that was, to some extent, fair enough.

But one wonders whether he will be able to get away with the same trick second time round. This year’s cut in the Scottish grant was, after all, just the start. The next three years will see further real terms cuts, cumulatively costing the Scottish government £2bn in resource spending.

The SNP will doubtless lay every criticism of them at the door of these spending cuts. But that will look less and less credible as the cost of the council tax freeze (actually a tax cut) starts to mount up, to the tune of a further £70m each year. We’re currently in year four of the freeze, so £280m is being spent on the freeze during this financial year. For the next three financial years, that will increase to £350m, £420m and £490m, respectively; a total of £1.26bn. And, by the end of the five year freeze, the annual total will be £630m, while the cumulative total will be £2.45bn. So the SNP actually plan to take more out of the public purse over the next five years than the Tories plan over the next three.

Now, it might be said that the SNP has a mandate for the council tax freeze. Perfectly true. But voters expect political parties to know what they are doing when they make election pledges, and aren’t generally too kind on them when things go wrong-even when they were only doing what the public asked them to in the first place. Besides, the public may well decide that the SNP didn’t spell out the consequences of the freeze: namely, less funding for public services, and a pay freeze (again, in reality a pay cut) of indeterminate length for the public sector.

A programme for government based on tax cuts and pay freezes isn’t social democratic, and it is difficult to see how it can build a fair society. Scots understand that, if you want a fairer society, someone has to pay for it; and asking (well, telling) public sector workers to take a pay freeze doesn’t cut the mustard. If Scottish Labour wants to develop a critique of the SNP, and go some way towards rehabilitating its leftish credentials, then it needs to start reminding people of that. You don't get many chances in the Scottish Parliament to change the public's perception; for my money, this is one of them.