Tartan Tories

Vince Mills

Vince Mills Exposes the SNP's Neoliberal Core

Any illusions that naive left wing nationalists with a small or a big ‘N’ might have had about the core values of the SNP leadership have now been blown clear out of the water. In a recent interview with the journal Total Politics Salmond is quite explicit about his support for Thatcherite economics with a clear reference to the leaderine herself.

I make no apologies for repeating the quote used by Elaine Smith in her article earlier in this issue:

“I suppose I have tried to bring the SNP into the mainstream of Scotland. We have a very competitive economic agenda. Many business people have warmed towards the SNP. We need a competitive edge, a competitive advantage - get on with it, get things done, speed up decision making, reduce bureaucracy. The SNP has a strong social conscience, which is very Scottish in itself. One of the reasons Scotland didn't take to Lady Thatcher was because of that. We didn't mind the economic side so much. But we didn't like the social side at all.”

The fact that Salmond tries to make a distinction between the social and economic side of Thatcher betrays how close he is to the trickle down beliefs of the neo liberals and the assumption, entirely discredited as we shall see later, that the wealth generated in a successful capitalist economy eventually reaches everyone. Perhaps Salmond believes the Boli drinking yobs of the stock exchange in the mid eighties sent envelopes stuffed with tenners to the devastated mining communities of Fife.

For if the ‘economic’ policy of Thatcher was to create the conditions for a ‘free’ market, where traditional industries were undermined, the manufacturing sector’s needs subjugated to those of finance capital and the unions destroyed to make this possible, then its social consequences are the legacy of Scottish working class communities blighted with unemployment, illness, alcoholism, drugs and ‘anti social’ behaviour.

Of course Salmond, in a strong echo of Gordon Brown, is trying to argue that somehow or another he can square that particular neoliberal circle: the wealthy get wealthier but not at the expense the poor who are somehow protected. To be fair to Salmond and the SNP government we have seen some positive attempts at this – for example abolishing prescription charges and student fees. But welcome though such measures are, these will not protect the vast majority of working people from the chill winds of capitalist recession and inflation and some of the other measures that the SNP plan will indeed have quite the opposite effect.

For example, their desire to ditch the council tax may appear to be progressive. After all the tax, which is essentially property based, can only have crude mechanisms for compensating comparatively poor people living in a high banded home. Many pensioners, for example, hate it. Consequently the SNP notion of taxing income instead, would seem more equitable. But of course very wealthy people accrue wealth in ways other than earned income; indeed in relation to that sector of society property at least cannot be hidden or exempted through ‘creative accounting’. To quote the leader of the Scottish Tories, yes the Tories:
"Under the Scottish national income tax, the dustman will pay but the duke will not."

However, it is the potential impact on local government finances that is much more likely to hurt working class Scots.

To begin with it is not clear whether the SNP proposed income tax will generate sufficient finance to fund local authority provision. And if we are concerned with protecting the poor then the work of local authorities in education, housing, welfare is absolutely crucial. There is a sharp battle in progress with the Westminster government on the £400 million in council tax relief currently transferred to Scotland under the existing system. Westminster argues Scotland would not be entitled to this under the new system. The Scottish government begs to differ. However the potential danger to working class communities goes beyond this spat.

The SNP has reached an agreement with local authorities in Scotland called the Single Outcome Agreement (SOA). Under this deal councils froze the council tax to allow for the implementation of a new system and the Scottish government committed itself to reducing the level of ring-fencing to the point where it barely matters. The effect of this is that grants specific to particular areas over which the local authority had no authority to spend in any other way will now be part of a large pot of money which the authority will spend as it sees fit as long as it is in line with national priorities as set out in the SOA.

So what are these national priorities? As you might have imagined they come straight out of the contradictory ‘neo-liberalism with a social conscience school’ much beloved of Salmond and Brown.

Here is national outcome number one: “We live in a Scotland that is the most attractive place for doing business in Europe.”

And here are the first three national indicators and targets:
1. At least halve the gap in total research and development spending compared with EU average by 2011
2. Increase the business start-up rate
3. Grow exports at a faster average rate than GDP

It is not till number 10 we get an indicator on reducing poverty. The presumption, as I argued earlier, is that wealth creation will lead to a reduction in inequality, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary in the UK experience: as the New Statesman recently pointed out in the UK the number of children officially living in poverty is on the rise; two and a half million pensioners are living in poverty; the poorest twenty per cent of population saw their incomes fall last year meanwhile the richest twenty percent got richer, now taking over 40% of the national income and social mobility is in decline. Indeed it is the lowest in the developed world.

The SOA will mean that councils in Scotland will be likely to push spending where it gets the greatest political rewards – in the areas where people are most politically active and most likely to vote. Already there are signs that areas of low priority will take a disproportionate reduction in funding – adult learning, caring projects for disadvantaged groups and according to the Scottish Parent Teacher Council’s newsletter Backchat even education where not just materials but staffing levels have been reduced.

The SNP have worked hard at dismissing Labour’s perhaps hypocritical jibe of ‘Tartan Tories’, hypocritical given New Labour’s addiction to wealth and inequality . Salmond is apparently desperately trying to undo the damage that his interview has done in tarnishing the leftish image they would like to project. The reality is that in so far as the SNP espouse the politics of neo-liberalism any attempt at portraying themselves as working class champions will fail. This will be particularly evident in local government where cuts will see more and more people wake up to the fact that government at Scottish or local level can either be used to provide services and support for the whole community or function as a prop for private enterprise and a vehicle for the civic aspirations of the articulate middle class.