Yesterday, faced with the biggest fall in living standards since rationing, the Chancellor of the Exchequer failed to present a spring statement that would make life easier for millions of families.
He failed to introduce a windfall tax, he failed to put more money into people’s pockets and he raised the tax burden on millions of families across the United Kingdom.
He must have been taking lessons on missed opportunities from the First Minister. In her Government’s budget, the First Minister had the opportunity to tackle the cost of living crisis but, just like the Tories, her Government failed to do so.
Copying Rishi Sunak’s policy, by giving households less than £4 a week in a council tax rebate, will not cut it. Will the First Minister accept that the actions that she has taken so far are not enough to confront the crisis?
These were Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s opening remarks at First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament yesterday.
You could say he beat Nicola Sturgeon with a very small stick. And the Tories too, of course. Mr Sarwar always squeezes them in as if they were an after-thought, which they are of course.
However, Nicola Sturgeon is a tartan Tory, a Me First Thatcherite, who puts herself first in everything she does – apart from taking the blame when things go wrong, which they do often for the SNP and the Scottish government. She is simply an old misery guts.
She told Mr Sarwar, who was dressed like a Tory, apart from from his red tie, of course (who wears a tie nowadays?) and has the air of a man with money about him, which could be his downfall when the country goes to the polls next year.
Nicola Sturgeon on the other hand, with her smart two-piece suits and four-inch heels, would be Thatcher’s living image were she to have her hair coloured the right shade of blonde.
You wouldn’t find many people around these days who were proud of the fact that they had made a significant contribution to the state this country is in right now, apart from Maggie and NIcola that is.
Her put down to Mr Sarwar was this: “In the Scottish Government’s budget, we doubled the Scottish child payment, which is game changing for families with children who are living in poverty. If memory serves me correctly, the Labour Party shamefully voted against that measure in the Scottish budget.
“Yesterday’s spring statement [by Chancellor Rishi Sunak] showed a callous disregard for the misery that people are already facing and that will only get much worse.
“Household incomes are about to suffer their biggest fall in more than 60 years. The Resolution Foundation has estimated that an additional 1.3 million people across the UK, including half a million children, will be pushed into poverty. There was nothing in the spring statement to help the poor and those on the lowest incomes, which I think was shameful.
“The most shameful thing about the chancellor’s announcements yesterday is that he squirreled away money for pre-election bribes. That money could be spent right now to help those who are in desperate circumstances. His actions yesterday in that regard were disgusting.”
Stirring stuff then if you didn’t know that Sturgeon suffers from a form of sqandermania, which isn’t a mild one.
If you add that £400 million and counting she conned us into to bring back shipbuilding to the River Clyde to build two Calmac ferries and add that to Prestwick Airport or whatever from abandoned roads projects to schools where the walls fall down if you look at them the wrong way and the own goal with the finances of Rangers FC then you are over £1 billion and heading for the next significant figure.
Sturgeon whines on about Scottish independence and blames the other parliament in the UK for all of Scotland’s problems — “With regard to the Scottish Government’s actions, we have limited powers and resources but, due to our wider long-standing policies, people here already pay less, on average, in council tax, water bills and rail fares.
“Unlike people who live south of the border, people in Scotland pay nothing for prescriptions, eye tests or university tuition. In addition to the £150 payment through council tax, we have decided to uprate devolved benefits by 6 per cent. The failure to do so south of the border is having the biggest impact on low-income families.”
So, we, the electorate are spectators to a contest around how many people have Covid or been tested for it at any given moment (a moment that usually suits Sturgeon) despite the fact that she told us all at the beginning of the disastrous two years we have just come through that politics would be put to one side during the pandemic. That we were all in this together.
Does my head button up the back? Does yours?
While she was desperately trying to cover up the ferries financial scandal this week (£400 million squandered and that’s far from the end of it), she pulled a tartan rabbit out of a top hat and announced the £5 rise in the Scottish child welfare fund and an increase in the fuel insecurity fund.
Ms Sturgeon blamed Scotland’s plight on the fact that that the country has not chosen to go down the road to independence — “We will continue to do everything that we can within our powers and resources, but anybody who is serious about helping the lowest paid would be arguing and demanding that powers and resources be taken out of the hands of Rishi Sunak and his type and put into the hands of this Parliament.”
Would she really like to see Scotland take part in and pay for the war in Ukraine. We would be even more skint than we are now.
Anas Sarwar batted Sturgeon’s rhetoric to the Holyrood boundary. He told her: “We welcome the doubling of the Scottish child payment, but that plan predates the cost of living crisis.
“More than 270,000 children will not benefit from it, and poverty campaigners say that it needs to go further.
“The First Minister wants to obsess about powers that she does not have, but she has been in power for 15 years, so she has power and she should use it to change people’s lives, because that is what the job is for.
“Let us look at what she has done with the powers that she has. She has copied Rishi Sunak’s council tax rebate, failed to target support to those who are most in need, increased rail fares and put up water charges for Scottish households.
“We have published detailed plans on how to confront the cost of living crisis but, so far, the Scottish National Party has not listened.
“Scottish Water, which is owned by the Scottish Government, is currently sitting on a cash mountain of £428 million, so Scottish Labour is calling not just for the freezing of water charges but for a £100 rebate for every household in Scotland.
“Does the First Minister believe that that money is better off in Scottish Water’s bank account or in struggling families’ accounts?”
And so the debate, like an old stairheed row, goes on interminably in places like the old Vennel in Dumbarton and Random Street in the Vale.
Dumbarton is deprived. It’s a dump where it matters most to observers. The Town Centre. Same with the Vale. And it’s a leaderless dump with just a few saving graces. The SNP have done little about that. You can change things for the better by using your vote at the local council elections on May 5. And remember this, communities like this one usually get the council they deserve.