Cutting back on universal benefits is the right course: SNP take heed

In Labour’s case, the messaging is intended to place firmly in the public memory an understanding that the Tories bequeathed a poisoned economic legacy; a fiscal black hole of unimaginable proportions which must be filled before virtue can begin to prevail.

While accepting that general premise, I am less sure about the messaging. Clement Attlee came in off the back of a ruinous World War and did pretty well in changing society. Harold Wilson bewailed “13 wasted Tory years” but offered the “white heat of technology” as a beacon for the future.

Before October, Labour has to refine its positive narrative as well as donning the hair shirt. Most people instinctively know that Starmer is generally right. There is much in Britain that is broken as the state of public services, across all of our internal borders, confirms.

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That’s a large part of why people eventually turned against the Tories. The challenge of drawing a line before genuinely levelling-up, socially and geographically, is daunting in scale. It is indeed a ten year job but there must also be some interim indications to demonstrate change. Memories are too fickle to be relied upon for long.

The problem for the SNP is that there has been no recent change in government. For anyone approaching middle-age, there is nobody but them to look back on or blame, at least in terms of the remit which actually exists. Their job has been to govern competently within the well-understood parameters of devolution and they have failed in that duty on every available front.

The timely report from the Scottish Fiscal Commission spelt this out in unusually straightforward terms. “While UK government policies contribute to the pressures on the Scottish budget, much of the pressure comes from the Scottish Government’s own decisions”, it said.

Most of these decisions were founded in politics and dismissive of economic management. They were the kind of things governments would like to do if they had unlimited funds – higher pay awards, council tax freezes, free things for everybody regardless of ability to pay. For years, all these have been weaponised to declare: “We’re better. We’re different”.

In the process, many of what should have been high priorities were marginalised. Money was squandered on the grand scale without application of intellectual or economic rigour. If a headline cost a few million, then so be it.

Now Ms Robison’s rather desperate “emergency measures” send out the message: “We’re bust”. Reality has kicked in and maybe that is no bad thing. If the Scottish Government finally has to live within its means, maybe we can get back to politics as the language of priorities.

A focus on doing some things well, or even excellently, is what devolution was supposed to deliver. There was plenty money to achieve that if the political commitment existed to focus on them, even if that meant relegating other options to another day. Instead, fortunes have been scattered around with remarkably little to show for them.

Those of us who have tried to argue against the SNP’s attachment to “universalism” over these years were shouted down by cries of “means-testing” as if this should automatically invoke stigmas of the 1930s with harsh guardians of the public purse denying alms to the poor.

In fact, the exact opposite is the truth. In its modern manifestation, “means-testing” in the context of finite resources is the only way to ensure that the poor advance, in both absolute and relative terms. Giving money to those who do not need it can only be at the expense of those who do.

That has been the Scottish way, with the council tax freeze as a prime example with disastrous consequences for local government services.

Another obvious manifestation of the “universalism” hypocrisy surrounds the funding of higher education and “free tuition” duly became one of the SNP’s early flagships. There was even a monument which celebrated Alex Salmond’s attachment to that cause in the grounds of Heriot-Watt University before someone thoughtfully removed it from public view.

Keir Starmer delivers his pre-Budget warning in the Downing Street rose garden on Tuesday (Image: PA)

The lie was put about that “means-testing” would deny poor kids the right to go to university. Again, the exact opposite was the truth. If the same money had been focused where it was needed, it could have been transformational. Instead, it has hardly moved the dial while leaving most of Scotland’s universities in penury.

Anyone serious about progressive politics would tear up the current model and start again. The aim would not be to uphold an empty slogan – “universal free tuition” – but to reduce the chasm of disadvantage which exists within Scotland’s education system. They are two very different concepts.

The problem with “free things” arises when they have to be taken away, as the Scottish Government may be about to discover. The incoming Labour government has bitten that bullet with the decision to limit winter fuel payments to those who are on Pension Credits.

Again, the principle of the change is right. Most people agree that it is poor value to lodge a couple of hundred quid in the accounts of every pensioner who doesn’t need it. But a blunt cut-off instrument isn’t a very satisfactory answer either.

The real scandal is that only 60 per cent of those eligible for Pension Credit actually claim it. Good can come of this if a fair proportion of the other 40 per cent are persuaded to sign up. It’s another indicator of how tricky it is to transition away from a society in which inequality is institutionalised rather than challenged on every front.

Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003.