In the history of devolution, no Westminster government has ever given Scotland as large a block grant settlement as the one announced by Labour on Wednesday. In her fiscal statement, the chancellor declared that politicians north of the border will receive £1.5 billion this year and a record £3.4 billion next year via the Barnett formula. It’s a move that caught the SNP by surprise, and one that has thrown the nationalist’s political strategy into doubt.
Long before the July election, the SNP government began an anti-Labour austerity campaign – claiming Keir Starmer’s ‘tough decisions’ rhetoric was code for public service spending cuts while using policy positions like Keir Starmer’s retention of the two-child benefit cap and bedroom tax to back up their ‘red Tory’ narrative. On the morning of the Budget, the party’s Westminster group leader Stephen Flynn accused Starmer’s party of planning to ‘break its word and impose deeper austerity cuts than the Tories’.
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