LET’S be honest. That Budget was different.
Britain’s first female Chancellor looked, sounded and behaved differently. There was none of the pompous, strutting deployed by her Tory predecessors. Rachel Reeves used plain language and belted through her plans, adding (obviously favourable) context and some cheeky punchlines. There was genuine laughter when she took a pop at Rishi Sunak, announcing a huge hike in private jet taxes “travelling to … let’s say … California”.
Sure, the biggest MP cheer was for 1p off a pint of draught beer. And some of the big wows announced for England are old hat for Scots.
READ MORE: How will the Budget affect me in Scotland? See the key points
The right to buy council housing will only be curbed in England, not abolished as it was here in 2016. The minimum wage will be raised from £11.44 to £12.20 for over 20s. But the Living Wage in Scotland is currently £12.60 for over-18s.
Of course, that rate is voluntary since Labour decided Holyrood wasn’t mature enough to run a compulsory minimum wage. But most big firms and public sector employees are already on the higher “Living” rate which crucially includes 18- to 20-year-olds.
This age group in England gets a lower rate – not abolished yesterday by Rachel Reeves, though increased – and that encourages unscrupulous employers to fire youngsters at 20 in favour of lower-paid teenagers. A truly progressive government would abolish all age distinctions.
Big bucks will be spent on a new electrified railway to connect the cities of northern England. After the HS2 debacle that left the English north with nowt, that’s fair enough. But Scotland’s been quietly running a state-owned railway for two years and has already electrified most Central Belt tracks, without borrowing.
But the big news is massive capital spending on schools, affordable housing, hospitals and transport in England which will contribute to what Reeves (above) described as the biggest ever real-terms block grant for Scotland. That’s worse than independence but better than a punch in the throat.
Combined with Tory criticism that her hikes in capital gains tax, inheritance tax and private school fees amount to “class war”, many Scots may feel pleasantly surprised. Reeves has thrown down the gauntlet to the Tories at Westminster and also to the SNP.
Yes, Labour promised no tax rises yet there were tax rises which will filter through to “working people”, however Reeves chooses to define them. But that may not be how the public hears it.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m absolutely no Labour convert. I’m for independence 100%. But that Budget constituted a long overdue attempt by someone in Labour to produce a detailed plan of where they’re taking Britain and it was as unusually positive as everything to date has been painfully negative.
In other words, the belief that the SNP can coast to victory in 2026 because Labour has shot itself so badly in the foot over Winter Fuel Payments – that pious hope is for the birds.
In her Budget, Reeves nailed some of Labour’s colours to the mast – and they’re not as hodden grey as many predicted. Indeed, for voters sickened by Tory destruction of the public realm for decades, some of those crisp sentences about the value of the NHS and state education will come as music to their ears. Even hard-bitten, won’t-be-fooled-again Scottish ears. Maybe even independence-supporting ears.
So, the SNP/ Scottish Government (hidebound by borrowing restrictions and all the rest) must respond with a clear, big, new vision. Nothing less will do.
Sharon Graham from trade union Unite has not been shy to tackle the weakness of Labour’s new agenda, tweeting: “The top 50 families have more wealth than half our population. If we taxed just 1% on the wealthiest 1%, the so-called black hole would be gone.”
Indeed. So, will the SNP endorse a wealth tax? One was passed at their conference and then politely ignored.
Caroline Lucas, former MP and ex-Greens co-leader, tweeted: “Govt decision to keep regressive Tory fuel duty freeze and penalise bus users utterly nonsensical. What happened to promoting public transport?”
Without tackling the disastrous deregulation of buses – as the Scottish Government has done – Westminster bus price caps are still just fiddling while the country and the world burns and floods. Can Scotland do better?
Reeves nodded to GB Energy’s yet-to-be-opened Aberdeen HQ, but Scots know its boss Juergen Maier will be located 350 miles away – near Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan universities where he already serves as a visiting professor. Easier. For him.
What ambitious scheme – produced with councils and private investors – would bring district heating pilot schemes forward fast? Even the Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay had a novel take: “Sir Keir Starmer has clearly decided to become Nicola Sturgeon this Halloween. Labour’s tax-raising Budget is straight out the SNP playbook and will terrify hard-working Scots.”
First of all, that Budget was delivered by Rachel Reeves. She’s in the same party as Keir Starmer right enough, but a separate and visibly different human being. So, airbrushing her entire presence, status and effort sounds pretty sexist. Clearly, for Findlay, Reeves is a Labour glove puppet, manipulated by Keir Male Starmer. Poor.
And then there’s the strange comparison with Nicola Sturgeon. Again, forgive me if this a statement of the bleedin’ obvious, but she’s not FM anymore.
And while a tax-raising Budget clearly scares the bejeezus out of Rusty, people in Scotland are in favour. An IPPR mega poll this summer found most feel comfortable with higher taxes and statistics show migration into Scotland increased when our income tax began to diverge from the rest of the UK.
READ MORE: 'Poor Scotland': National columnists give verdict on Labour Budget
So, Russell is kinda off beam. (A bit like his observation Scots wouldn’t notice paying a tenner per prescription like England. Um, we would.) Still, Findlay has found his political hill to die on: small government, low taxes and a stampy-footy denial that his party raised national debt from £800 billion in 2010 to £2.6 trillion in 14 short years.
However, there is an interesting comparison to be made between Reeves and Sturgeon: both women are exceptional, simply for being capable women in conventionally male leadership roles. Indeed, Reeves in her Budget speech sounded a lot more like the assured Sturgeon in Covid press conferences and a lot less like huffy, hectoring Starmer.
But merely sounding good doesn’t get you far at Westminster or Holyrood. So more importantly, Reeves’ Budget choices also hinted at a Labour strategy. Where’s the big thought-through SNP response?
Now, to be fair, as I write it’s just hours after the Budget speech. Stephen Flynn has already criticised the decision to raise employers’ National Insurance contributions, and said the Government should have U-turned on its Winter Fuel Payment cut as well as scrapped the two-child benefit cap.
Perhaps the legal case by a Scots couple that’s being fronted by Joanna Cherry KC will help make that U-turn for them.
Flynn (above) also pointed out that “people in Scotland are still paying the price for Brexit”. That’s true. But it’s not an alternative vision for Scotland.
For every big challenge ducked by Reeves, there was one met with a broadly progressive political logic we haven’t heard from a British chancellor in 14 long years.
And that change will have a ripple effect. Yessers will question what the SNP is doing at Westminster after Labour flashed its ruthless streak by reducing the party’s membership of the Scottish Affairs Committee to a single MP. That’s just a sign of what lies ahead.
Stealing the SNP’s once-progressive thunder. Carving them out of governance. Making the big public spending pledges that Scots have longed to hear. Bypassing Holyrood.
It was easy with the Conservatives in charge at Westminster, and easy-ish during the first stumbling days of a new Labour Government. But Rachel Reeves’s Budget suggests that it won’t be so easy for the Scottish Government from now on.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel