The SNP has trashed devolution, so why should Labour care?

The SNP finds itself on very tricky ground right now, trying to attack the new Labour government for ‘disrespecting’ devolution.

The matter centres on plans to tinker with legislation, allowing the Scotland Office to bypass Holyrood and directly fund anti-poverty schemes. 

The Scottish Secretary Ian Murray may be allocated £150 million by Chancellor Rachel Reeves to finance projects with local authorities to help deprived areas of Scotland.

Does this undermine devolution? Well, in principal, yes of course it does. Such spending should be a matter for the Scottish Government.

However, the bigger question is this: will anyone apart from the SNP care?

Will ordinary voters give a damn about claims that Westminster spending money in Scotland to combat poverty assaults devolution?

It’s going to be a hard sell for the SNP to argue that lifting children out of poverty by any means necessary isn’t fundamentally a good thing. 

Now, clearly, the UK government is playing politics here too. Showering some gold on good causes is likely to be a matter Labour MSPs will remind voters about very loudly come the Holyrood election in 2026.

Equally treacherous for the SNP is that the party risks opening itself to allegations that it has badly damaged devolution through its own prolonged inadequacy in government.

Read more:

Unspun | Holyrood 2026 battle-lines: who’s to blame for harming Scotland most, SNP or Labour?

The Labour Party is fully within its rights to say: ‘yeah, ok, we maybe have rode a little rough-shod over devolution in this case, but that’s because you, SNP, couldn’t govern and were trashing the reputation of devolution through endless failure. Oh, and also, we were helping kids out of poverty’.

Now, of course, the SNP can shoot back with two barrels: one, which blasts Labour for continuing the Tory austerity which created poverty in the first place; and a second which targets Labour for undermining Scottish democracy.

Evidently, Labour can return fire, citing examples of how the SNP did little to mitigate Tory austerity. The SNP’s decision to inflict brutal cuts on the affordable housing budget at the same time as there’s 10,000 kids homeless will be high up in its political obituary.

So, it’s a tennis-match debate, a back-and-forth of he-said-she-said. However, all that matters is which argument will voters care most about. 

It seems a fair bet that fighting poverty trumps esoteric talking points about the niceties of devolution every time – especially if the results of anti-poverty spending are there to be seen in 2026.

When SNP MP Pete Wishart says the Scotland Office plan is “following the Tories example of bypassing Holyrood and disrespecting Scottish democracy”, do many people care?

When Finance Secretary Shona Robison says of the planned spend “there’s definitely a question mark about why that money is not coming to the Scottish Government given all of these funding pressures that we have”, are voters really concerned about who’s spending it, or how it’s spent?

The SNP has stored up this pain for itself. It can be repeatedly hit with the claim: ‘well you disrespected devolution by governing so abysmally, so how can you complain about Labour disrespecting devolution?’

Read more:

Unspun | Neil Mackay: SNP is reduced to late-night booty-call for promiscuous voters

The old ‘lead by example’ argument is hard to trounce. If the SNP had governed well, then there’s every chance the electorate would indeed be offended by Labour muscling in on the territory of the Scottish government.

Just look at the news cycle of late for the ammunition which can be used against the SNP. The educational attainment gap between rich and poor kids has widened to the worst on record. Closing that gap was supposedly the ultimate test for the SNP. 

Meanwhile, SNP-led Glasgow City Council has admitted that its plans to cut teacher numbers “may have a detrimental impact on the poorest children”.

Peak rail fares are back after the Scottish Government ditched a pilot scheme. A Glasgow-Edinburgh return will now cost around £31.40. 

The move hammers the average working commuter, and kills off any notion that the SNP cares about green politics. Even the most avowed environmentalist might be inclined to take the car when trains are this expensive.

Scotland's drug deaths continue at a far higher rate than either England or the rest of Europe. In response, the acting Minister for Drug Policy, Neil Gray, insisted the Scottish Government was “on the right course”.

How he can say this, when the SNP has in the past cut funds for drug and alcohol recovery, is astonishing. 

For example, in 2016, alcohol and drug partnerships were told by the Scottish Government that direct funding for their work – which includes rehabilitation – would fall from £69.2 million to £53.8 million.

Meanwhile, this week, the SNP implodes around the issue of Gaza. The dysfunction within the party is such that it must be impossible for ministers to concentrate on the day job.

Given this chaotic hinterland, it understandably raised a few eyebrows when the Scottish Government found time to intervene in a planned ‘harness racing track’ at Bannockburn battlefield. 

Sure, preserving heritage is important – but so are drug deaths, education and green transport. The SNP’s priorities look plain stupid a lot of the time these days.

And the very notion that money is better spent by the SNP is shot to pieces by the Scottish Government underspending its budget by almost £300 million last year – despite complaining about lack of funds from Westminster. 

There were also reports that the SNP failed to spend hundreds of millions in EU funds and so would have to return the money.

Read Neil Mackay every Friday in the Unspun newsletter.

The Scottish Government has not, by any sane standard, for some years now, helped devolution. In fact, many would argue, that be failing to develop good, functioning, utilitarian policy which assists as many people as possible in society it has damaged devolution.

Of course, yet again, the SNP can adopt its perennial get-out-of-jail free card by saying ‘if Scotland was independent we’d have all the levers of power at our disposal to pass good laws’. 

But, really, who’s buying that anymore, apart from the SNP’s dwindling band of members? Party numbers have plummeted almost by half since 2019.

The bottom line is: if the SNP has indeed trashed devolution, then why should the Labour Party care about undermining it even further? And more: why should the electorate care either?

There’s a deep and bitter irony here and it’s this: the party of independence has opened the door to the erosion of Scottish devolution.