This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.

SNP leaders are already pretty much unloved by the party’s base. The hardline and fundamentalist wing seethes about how silent the Scottish Government has become on independence.

So any hint of John Swinney and Shona Robison clambering into bed with Labour to get their budget passed will set the leadership on a collision course with its own base.

Robison has hinted at an arrangement with Labour. When the finance secretary was asked if the budget might lead to a possible deal with Labour, she replied: “My door is open to everybody, and I’ve said I want to build as broad a coalition for the budget as I can.

“I think that would be a positive thing actually, and there’s hopefully a lot that people will agree on.”

She’s right, many would see such collegiate working as very positive – but not the SNP’s base, which hates Labour with almost the same intensity as the Tories. That’s why they call Labour ‘Red Tories’ after all. To many nationalist hardliners, the two unionist parties are indistinguishable.

One clear sign that the SNP needs Labour came in the cautious welcome Robison gave to Rachel Reeves’ budget, calling it a “step in the right direction”.

Even that infuriated the base – prompting comments across the internet about a “unionist SNP government”, and reigniting rage over the failure by the leadership to push for another referendum.

In case anyone should be inclined to feel sorry for the SNP government, don’t – this is all their own doing. 

Read more Unspun from Neil Mackay:

When Humza Yousaf stabbed the Green Party in the back and booted them from government, he set this series of events in train. He dethroned himself in an act of political stupidity only outdone by Liz Truss, and fashioned a torture chamber for his successor.

Without the Greens, the SNP cannot pass its budget. In fact, without the Greens the SNP has become a government of the walking dead entirely at the mercy of its political rivals.

Not only do the Greens already have a series of ransom demands if the SNP wants their support for its spending programme, the party has decided at its conference to vote against the SNP budget if necessary.


The Scottish Greens say that their “very minimum” ask is no repeat of the council tax freeze and a real-terms increase in council funding. Lorna Slater said that her party is “absolutely” ready to bring down the government over the budget.

Robison hasn’t ruled out ending the council tax freeze. But where would the government find the money to boost local authority coffers?

The Greens flexed their muscles just the other day when they withdrew support for SNP plans to create a National Care Service. The proposal is now effectively dead. Councils and trade unions have also withdrawn support.

The SNP is a ghost party – a zombie government. It simply cannot pass legislation. Its plans for rape trials without juries, for instance, have just been scrapped.

To add to SNP woes, the Labour budget – while hardly a ray of socialist sunshine – was not quite as austerity-heavy as many feared. That reduces the SNP ability to keep itself buoyant by portraying the Starmer government as evil incarnate. Reeves didn’t come out and terrify the population as nationalists hoped.

So the SNP finds itself thoroughly boxed in. The hubris, of imagining that the Greens were simply disposable, has been their undoing. The nationalists were treacherous and it is coming back to bite them in cruel ways.

Among the Green Party’s membership there is real anger towards the SNP, and a festering desire for vengeance. Indeed, many would prefer if Robison and Swinney refused to negotiate so they could wield the knife in return. 

It will be hard to meet the demands of Greens anyway – which is why this channel is opening up regarding a possible deal with Labour.

Many socially conservative SNP members found collaborating with the Greens a step too far. The Greens are just too ‘woke’ for some nationalists. But at least Greens were fellow travellers when it came to independence.

Read Neil Mackay every Friday in the Unspun newsletter.


Having to rely on Labour to get the budget passed would be like replacing your breakfast cuppa with a glass of cold sick. It will infuriate the SNP’s die-hard MacGlashans.

On top of that, having to go cap in hand to the Labour Party, when Starmer and Reeves are riding relatively high after their own budget, would simply be humiliating for the SNP hierarchy full stop.

It becomes increasingly difficult to war-game what the SNP does next. Everywhere you look it seems checkmate. Fail to bend the knee to the Greens – defeat. Suck up to Labour – internal rage. And meanwhile, Starmer seems to be stabilising his government after a quite wobbly start.

It is a twin-engine which keeps Scotland’s government in power. One engine depends on passing a budget; the other engine relies on the Westminster government playing the monster so voters turn to the SNP. 

Both engines seem about to fail. That would leave the SNP in free fall with nowhere to go but down. And it’s really not that long until the next Holyrood election.

Neil Mackay is The Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.