Labour Budget might just precipitate an early Scottish election

Come what may, for Scotland, the implications are likely to be stark, and nowhere starker than in the debate about the Scottish Budget Reeves’ decisions will precipitate.

While Holyrood can tinker with income tax bands and a selection of other devolved taxes, a significant proportion of the Scottish Budget is underpinned by the block grant back from Whitehall, reflecting so-called Barnett consequentials and money taken in from reserved levies including national insurance and corporation tax.

John Swinney (left) and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar could be going head to head (Image: Jane Barlow)The SNP currently have 62 MSPs in Holyrood – three short of the magic number giving the party an overall majority in Holyrood. Horse-trading and a degree of pantomime are to be expected on occasions like this, as the opposition tests its strength against the Government, extracting as much support for their policy agenda as they can, while wargaming the risks and consequences of overplaying their hands.

This weekend, the Greens have been ramping up the stakes, saying they’re prepared to “bring down” the Government if the budget proposals aren’t sufficiently to their liking. Purely as political gamesmanship, the threats need to seem real.

If the Greens opened their Budget negotiations with the SNP suggesting that there are no circumstances in which they’d vote against the Government, they’d get nothing for their pains.

This weekend, Patrick Harvie said: “As Scottish Green MSPs, we have a responsibility to engage with the process in good faith, and with honesty.

“But as the only party that ever brought down an SNP budget, as John Swinney knows to his cost, we need to be clear that they cannot take our votes for granted.”

If you regard the Greens as the gardening wing of the SNP, I imagine your eyes are already rolling in their sockets at this, and you’re predicting their inevitable and complete capitulation to the budget whims of their erstwhile coalition partners.

It’s true – the Greens have backed Scottish budgets since 2016. But this time, things might just change. Smarting and mistrust continues in the wake of the graceless way Humza Yousaf ended the Bute House Agreement. That attitude seems guaranteed to intensify if proposed government spending junks Green plans or just ignores Green priorities.

As LBJ said: “The first rule of politics is being able to count”. And in Holyrood, that means reaching the magic number of 65. Thus far, the other opposition parties appear wholly unprepared to help the SNP get their business through Holyrood, content to leave the long-term incumbents twisting in the wind.

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This has led to increased speculation in recent weeks that we may be well on our way to a new Holyrood election. It is commonplace in British politics that a government that can’t get its budget through parliament can’t remain in post. But the history of this in terms of devolution is a bit more nuanced than that.

Remember 2009?

Having secured the backing of the Scottish Tories, Alex Salmond’s minority government took the gamble that there was no way the Greens would vote against its budget. They gambled wrong. When the votes were counted, the final tally was exactly 64 votes for and 64 against the Scottish Government’s spending plans.

Presiding officer Alex Fergusson broke the tie by backing the status quo – voting down the proposals. The prospect of government collapse loomed again, the SNP were put “on an election footing” – a nifty phrase which doesn’t actually mean very much – and within a week, a revised version passed 123 to two, leaving the Greens isolated in the chamber that year.

But is history likely to repeat itself in this way? In all the circumstances, it seems improbable.

Given all these factors, you can understand why folk are talking up the possibility of no accord being struck, no alternative allies being found, leaving the SNP with a budget no other party is prepared to back, and no option but to resign and force an early Holyrood election.

But what’s often missing from this analysis is a recognition of the challenges – for the SNP or anyone else – to unilaterally bring this session of the Scottish Parliament to a premature end.

AS we learned in that memorable May downpour earlier this year, if the Prime Minister wants to call an early General Election and take their case to the country, Britain’s uncodified constitution makes the process comparatively easy.

Now that the Fixed Term Parliament Act has been repealed, if a PM wants to renew their mandate, blow their majority, or just escape from high office – all they need to do is toddle up to Buckingham Palace and ask the King to dissolve parliament.

This hands incumbent governments the advantage of keeping their opponents guessing when a poll might be called, with scope to select the moment of maximum difficulty for the opposition in calling a poll.

Throughout all this, the PM remains in place until the votes are counted, the dust has settled, and the monarch sends for their successor to come and kiss hands, to use the faintly gruesome terminology used for this first constitutional encounter between His Majesty and the head of His Majesty’s new government. No actual smooching seems to be involved, you’ll be relieved to hear.

For good or ill, first ministers are spared these difficult political decisions. The Scotland Act doesn’t give the First Minister anything like the same scope to seize the political initiative. Instead, Holyrood elections are fixed by law to fall on the first Thursday in May. During the early years of devolution, this worked on a steady four-year rotation. MSPs are now elected for five-year terms. Everything being equal, the next Holyrood poll should fall on Thursday May 7, 2026.

But the Scotland Act also includes some practical workarounds, recognising that politics change, governments fall, first ministers resign, fall ill, and sometimes die – and a more proportional electoral system may result in a wholly dysfunctional parliament being returned, unable to agree upon who should be first minister, unable to pass legislation or a budget.

Sir Keir Starmer with Anas Sarwar - they might find the next Scots election tricky (Image: free) If anyone wants to force an Extraordinary Scottish Election in Edinburgh, there are only two ways of going about it. The first is for the FM to resign. When this happens, MSPs then have 28 days to nominate and confirm the next First Minister. John Swinney’s quick succession after Humza Yousaf’s resignation is one recent example of this process operating as intended in the wild.

But what happens if there is deadlock or nobody is nominated for the FM’s vacant chair? If MSPs can’t agree on a successor after the month has passed, the King has authority under the Scottish Seal to dissolve Holyrood and order fresh elections. This isn’t exactly a speedy process either – and is a potentially uncertain one. In theory, at least, the opposition might try to cobble together an alternative governing coalition.

The only alternative route under the Scotland Act is to convince two-thirds of MSPs to vote in favour of going to the people early. That’s 86 votes out of 129 for dissolution, meaning MSPs from at least three different parties would need to sign on for the motion to stand any chance of passing. With 66 votes, even a wholly united opposition in Holyrood currently falls well short of the votes they’d need.

Realistically, this means the SNP are the only political party capable of putting a vote like this seriously on the agenda. If his Budget ends up stymied, if there is no viable political route forward, is Swinney the kind of leader to throw down this gauntlet to the opposition, chancy as it is, gambit that it’d be? And if he did, would they take it up?

Russell Findlay is new in his role as Scottish Tory leader, but given his confrontational brand of politics, there’s no reason for him to prioritise conciliation. Labour were busily demanding fresh elections after Humza Yousaf destroyed his premiership earlier this year. Even given the UK Labour Government’s ropey start, if anyone proposed an early election, Anas Sarwar’s only credible response must be “bring it on.” An Extraordinary Scottish Election might not be as far off as it seems.