Don’t worry if you missed the press release announcing which Scottish taxes are going up to pay for Nicola Sturgeon’s headline grabbing four per cent minimum pay rise offer for certain front-line healthcare workers, including nurses. You missed it because there wasn’t one.
In characteristically hubristic form, the Scottish Government made the announcement just a few hours before the pre-election ‘purdah’ period began, with Sturgeon immediately taking to Twitter to declare:
‘Our NHS staff deserve more than applause and one per cent is not enough’.
It was a thinly-veiled dig at the offer Boris Johnson’s administration has put forward in England.
Normally when a government makes an announcement like this the immediate question is: where is the money coming from? Cuts elsewhere, perhaps? Tax rises? Extra borrowing?
The announcements are a microcosm of the SNP’s years in power
In this case there is no need to ask. The Scottish Government has had so much money flowing into its coffers over the last 12 months – and Covid-19 spending announcements have been so ubiquitous and complex – that it has had more than enough cover and flexibility to organise a big pre-election giveaway with the resources at its disposal.
A February
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