John Swinney’s strategy for retaining the office of first minister after next year’s Holyrood election was fairly straight forward. All he had to do was sit back and watch a combination of the rise of Reform and Labour’s growing unpopularity split the opposition vote and the SNP would once again emerge as the biggest party in parliament. No rocking the boat with radical policy announcements – and definitely no campaigning for another referendum.
The SNP had asked for full fiscal autonomy as part of the new fiscal settlement put in place after the 2014 referendum
As Alex Salmond had done in the run-up to the 2011 Scottish election, the constitution, even though it is the raison d’être of the SNP, would be firmly side-lined until after votes had been cast. It is curious, then, why the SNP has chosen this moment to resurrect the ghost of full fiscal autonomy – where a financially independent Scotland would be responsible for all its taxation, spending and borrowing, with payments made to the UK government for certain collective services such as defence.
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