“Advanced”. The Green-SNP Scottish Government had to invent a name for its new tax band, and I suppose there was something of an inevitability that it would be an accidentally ironic misnomer. Like “progressive tax” or the “wellbeing economy”, there is nothing about the Scottish tax regime that could fairly be called advanced.

Perhaps, in fairness, it was difficult to create a name which summarises the economic illiteracy of this ruinous intervention in Scotland’s economy by its erstwhile competent Government, which has spent much of this term in office engaged in a curious self-sabotage. It began with the paranoia-fuelled decision to sell the family silver to the Greens, and is ostensibly without end.

This week’s Budget, we can only hope, is its nadir. Ironically, the root of Tuesday’s calamity is the enhanced tax-raising powers created by the latest iteration of the Scotland Act. That additional tax devolution required an adjustment in the block grant to compensate for the increased amount of money raised by, and staying in, Scotland - the so-called Fiscal Framework. In short, the Framework means that tax decisions by the Scottish Government actually matter these days. If we screw up, we can’t rely entirely on the block grant to bail us out.

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So when the anti-growth activists who hold sway with the Scottish Government scream “tax the rich”, as though they are still in a student union debate, and the Scottish Fiscal Commission says a penny on the top rate will raise almost nothing because of behavioural change, the victory of fantasy over reality matters. And when the NHS consultant decides to move from five days a week to four, because the fifth day is taxed at 70 per cent, as well as reducing tax revenue, it puts waiting lists and waiting times up in an already creaking NHS. When you squeeze the rich, you screw the poor. It’s hardly ‘up the workers’.

And when the Fraser of Allander Institute warns that workers earning enough to be caught by the new Advanced Rate will reduce hours, pay more into a pension, engage in salary sacrifice schemes or, as Nat West warned this week, discourage people from working in Scotland at all, that matters too. The people with most influence over the Green-SNP Government will be dancing a jig this week, for their smoke signal has been sent, once again, warning the world that Scotland rejects terribly old-fashioned economic growth and grubby capitalism.

Voters will be less enamoured. Like those in the Higher Rate band, who thought their financial bogey-man was the mortgage lender or the energy company, not the fiscal drag created by unchanged tax thresholds. Labelled wealthy by earning over £43,000, they will now pay a marginal rate of tax of over 50 per cent. That’s all teachers with more than three years of experience. All police officers with over eight years of experience. All doctors with more than two years of experience. All nurses above band five. These are the strugglers and strivers who are considered rich enough to have more than half their last pound taken from them by the Government.

The Herald: This week's Budget will have helped Anas SarwarThis week's Budget will have helped Anas Sarwar (Image: Newsquest)

As well as extolling the virtues of so-called progressive taxation for the sake of progressive taxation, the Government will seek to point to the real-world benefits of these higher taxes. But that is a tough gig. There is no evidence that our NHS performs better than England’s. There is plenty of evidence that our schools perform worse than England’s. And shouting “what about free tuition fees?” will be meaningless to the thousands of families who are sending their children to English universities, because Scottish universities cannot afford to take too many "free" Scottish kids.

There were some winners this week. Not the workers who’ll have their disposal income reduced. Again. Not the poorest Scots, who will feel most acutely the reduction in overall tax take which, as night follows day, will happen as a result of the behavioural change of people already here, and the stifled economic activity of those who will decide not to come because of the hostile environment.

No, the winners are all the people who will wear a red rosette at the next Westminster election, and then the Holyrood election thereafter. The Labour Party - the party of the worker, of the unions, of the left - did not think twice about its response to this week’s Budget. Labour said no.

Anas Sarwar, its leader in Scotland, in a mirror of the strategy being employed UK-wide by Sir Keir Starmer, is planting his tank on the centre ground, from where he knows elections are won. Both men are dealing with the eerily similar end-of-days chaos of long-serving governments. Mr Sarwar has a larger gap to bridge if he wants to stroll into Bute House in 2026, but the Scottish Government's economic management will help him immensely.

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As is the case with Sir Keir, people are turning to Mr Sarwar without him particularly having to do anything. He will be just fine with that; his arms are wide open. The business community, which liked the Scottish Government’s words in its New Deal for Scottish Businesses, but sees its deeds as being entirely juxtaposed, is pivoting to Labour not necessarily with deep enthusiasm, but with crossed fingers saying “they can’t be any worse, can they?”.

They are being, and will be, followed by the people. First the aspirational, the private sector workers, the small business owners, the self-employed. Then the nurses, the doctors, the teachers. They have been the absolute bedrock of the SNP surge over the last decade-and-a-half. But when you lose the economy, you lose them. And when you lose them, you lose elections.

It is not, yet, too late for the SNP. However it will require a Damascene conversion. It is not as impossible as it sounds. There are people in senior positions in the SNP parts of the Government who have their heads in their hands this week; the realists, defeated by the fantasists.

Those individuals will have to take back control in order for the SNP to take back its voters. We cannot tax our way out of this fiscal slump; we can only grow our way out of it.

This Government is in a hole. It needs the ladder of tax cuts and economic growth, not the spade tax rises and universal misery.