All is not well in Holyrood. The SNP announced its programme for government on Wednesday – but it hasn’t left many impressed. And now it transpires that the governing party is set to face further problems in passing its budget, as it continues to fail to work with its political opponents. Not like the Nats to rub people up the wrong way, eh?
Once in a co-operation agreement with the SNP, it seems the Scottish Greens are still rather upset with the nationalists. Patrick Harvie’s barmy army has thrown its toys out the pram after Swinney’s speech revealed that policies the parties had formerly worked on together were to be delayed. One decision blasted by the pro-indy eco-zealots is the removal of the pledge to deliver universal free school meals to all primary students. ‘That’s not acting in good faith,’ eco-activist Ross Greer raged to the BBC. ‘That’s something we had agreed. If we can’t even get previous agreements delivered on, how can we possibly trust them to deliver on any new agreement that we would reach later this year?’ The SNP government has also paused its rather controversial plans to ban conversion therapy and is desperate to reset its relationship with business, much to the frustration of the anti-growth Greens. Talk about trouble in paradise…
While the latest First Minister has insisted he wants to pursue constructive cross-party relations – rather necessary if his minority government wants to pass its budget – it seems that his political opponents are less convinced. Despite backing every budget since 2016, the Scottish Greens lamented the current state of their relationship with the SNP, with Greer fuming that he ‘really struggles to see how we are in a similar situation now’. Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar slammed Swinney’s programme for government for having ‘failed’ to honestly confront the challenges faced by the SNP’s Scotland. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross remarked disdainfully: ‘This was John Swinney’s big chance. Has he really waited 25 years to deliver that speech?’ Meanwhile a senior Liberal Democrat insider told the Times that: ‘This doesn’t feel like a governing party that’s trying too hard to make friends. Perhaps they have no intention of passing a budget and perhaps we are going to the country [for an election] sooner rather than later.’ Oh dear.
It follows the Scottish government’s rather unpopular decision to announce £500 million in cuts ahead of the budget, with the separatists once again blaming Westminster for the call – a strategy that hasn’t quite worked out for them in election of late. When the SNP’s Pete Wishart tried his hand at a bit of Labour-bashing in PMQs yesterday, the Prime Minister was quick to taunt the parliamentarian over his own party’s rather spectacular fall from grace, noting: ‘It’s a long way up when there’s so few of them – so I don’t think we need lectures on popularity from the SNP.’ Ouch. When it rains for the Nats, it pours…
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