IT is now in the public domain that the SNP’s delegates were told at its recent conference that it lost the middle-class vote in the recent General Election. It went to Labour.

Apart from the Unionist block whose vote is drawn largely from older residents, the middle-class vote is young, aspirational and doing reasonably well. The cohort includes many self-employed, home owners with big, but so far manageable mortgages, two cars and a couple of holidays abroad. They used to vote SNP.

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Surely some-one in the SNP hierarchy must have thought it unwise to proceed with conference resolutions to increase existing personal and council taxes on the middle classes and new taxes which would target the same middle class? If ever there was an example of the SNP suffering a disconnect between what it accepts as the reason for its electoral loss and its almost unanimous decision to pile on the tax on the middle class, this must be it. Can we not think how a proposal will adversely affect how people will vote before we go in with both feet?

We know from successive polling that within that middle-class cohort there are many who believe in independence but didn’t vote for any independence-supporting party. One of the reasons is that when the crunch vote comes, they need to be reassured that their lifestyle will not be adversely affected. The universality of benefits in Scotland acted as a cement for that vote up to this year. Now that the universality principle has been punctured by means-testing of winter fuel payments the middle classes will watch with alarm as what they have bought into is vanishing before their eyes just as they are called upon to invest more in tax for a much more modest payback.

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Poverty is an awful thing which should have no place in as rich a place as Scotland. But making the eradication of poverty your government’s main objective when it should be independence suggests that our leadership is not up for an immediate fight. Cynically, the opposition knows that the poor don’t generally vote, so they can rest reasonably assured that the Scottish Child Payment is not something which sets the majority of elector’s hearts on fire. The vast majority of Scots are not poor and they are more likely to vote for what benefits them.

There comes a time, too, when the electorate gets fed up with a constant diet of “our restricted powers limit what we can do” and the ever-present moan which drones out: “the Scottish Government is on a fixed budget which has fallen in real terms throughout the period of austerity and the UK Government won’t increase the block grant”.

These mantras are outrageously stupid when the head of the Scottish Government New and Environmental Tax unit says the Scottish Government can create new national taxes without the consent of the UK Government and transform the lives of all of us for the better.

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I have never believed the justification for separating the Scottish Government from the SNP. The SNP has been controlled and silenced by the Scottish Government since 2007. If you are lucky enough to have been elected to government on the back of your selection as an SNP candidate then you do act in the interests of all of Scotland as defined by the policy and vision of the SNP. Our view of what benefits the SNP and the nation as whole is indivisible.

Now the party must control the SNP government, and I hope the newly elected NEC will rebalance that relationship and call out any ministerial excuses to do anything which smacks of Unionism and undermines independence.

With that it mind, it’s high time that the SNP and the government which it has spawned start campaigning. Having the power of being the government on devolved matters allows us huge opportunities to campaign as the opposition on reserved matters.

There is no better campaign than to deliver the Scottish people from energy poverty. While the party can organise a Scotland-wide campaign on behalf of all domestic and commercial consumers to challenge the energy companies and regulator to set an equitable Scottish rate which equates to the lowest rates enjoyed elsewhere in the UK, The Scottish Government can use its considerable power to tax the pipes and cables of the energy supply companies under devolution and effectively deny any energy companies involvement in any energy projects in future.

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As the public sector itself is a huge consumer of energy there is surely a way in which the Scottish Government and local authorities could come together and tell the energy suppliers that they will not pay these geographically inflated charges and we are not subsidising the south any longer.

It’s not a rebuttal unit which is required; it’s a unit staffed with lawyers whose singular responsibility is to go over legislation like a rash and find the loopholes to test such unfair charges in the courts. Clever lawyers always find loopholes for the rich to avoid tax. Surely clever lawyers can find loopholes for the rest of us to avoid extortionate bills? Or is the SNP relegating us to suffer the ultimate iniquity of producing the goods and being forced to pay more for them?

Who is going to light the torch of freedom now?

Graeme McCormick
Arden