Through one lens, Labour’s tough welfare reforms are a gift to the SNP. The Nats can, will and indeed already have claimed that this is yet another example of how Westminster lacks compassion and is willing to balance its books on the backs of the poor. “No different to the Tories,” the cry rings out. There is certainly an audience for that school of thought.
Squint through a second lens, though, and Labour has presented the SNP with a horrible problem. While some of the changes announced by Liz Kendall this week – such as cuts to some Universal Credit payments – will apply directly in Scotland, others will not. For example, the Personal Independence Payment is devolved to and administered by the Scottish government and is called the Adult Disability Payment north of the border.
The billions of pounds Kendall intends to save through her measures will mean less money heading north through the Barnett Formula. Given welfare spending is already proportionately higher in Scotland – the Scottish Fiscal Commission has forecast that the difference between what Scotland spends on social security and the amount it receives from London will rise to £1.3bn in 2025-26 – this leaves the Nats with a deep, dark hole to fill.
And so, John Swinney is presented with a political opportunity that is also a policy nightmare. He can whinge and whine, but should he continue to sustain the rise in Scottish welfare spending, or accept the UK’s cuts and introduce comparable ones at Holyrood?
The SNP has made much of its greater empathy and generosity. For example, it has created the Scottish Child Payment for children living in poverty and increased other benefits above UK levels. The party has also pledged to mitigate the bedroom tax and the two-child benefit limit – expensive commitments, if sometimes cheaply made. But where will the money now come from to fund this tartan “kindness”? Swinney can blame Keir Starmer all he likes, but it will be his government that ultimately wields the knife, if that is what it chooses to do. Remember, taxes are already higher for Scots earning above £29,000 per year than for people elsewhere in the UK, and the First Minister has previously said he does not want to increase them further.
It is telling that, asked if the administration would mirror Westminster’s changes or prevent them taking effect, Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said there was only “so much the Scottish government can do.” This suggests that at least part of the tightening will be accepted, which will anger Scotland’s powerful anti-poverty caucus, which has grown used to getting its way under successive SNP first ministers, and the left of the independence movement.
It is all a challenge for Anas Sarwar, too. Scottish Labour has fallen well behind the SNP in the opinion polls – the latest this week suggested it will win just 19 seats in next May’s Holyrood election, compared to 55 for the Nats. This analysis leaves Labour just five seats ahead of Reform, which would be a disastrous result for Sarwar and cost him his job.
Although the Scottish Labour leader remains upbeat and believes he can still come out on top, there are now those in the party who are already conceding defeat. “We’re too far behind. I don’t see the path to victory. It’s gone,” one senior figure told me this week.
There are also those who, while accepting that Starmer’s difficult early months in office cost Scottish Labour its momentum, believe Sarwar is not seizing the moment or taking advantage of the changed times. The Prime Minister’s popularity has increased thanks to his sure-footed handling of the Ukraine crisis and his management of the Trump administration. Despite Labour revolts over foreign aid and welfare cuts, it seems the country prefers this newly determined and hard-headed Starmer.
It may be that Sarwar, trailing as he is, has little to lose by leaning into all of this. His policy agenda has so far done little to differentiate Scottish Labour from the SNP, which under Swinney is now occupying similar territory on public sector reform and economic growth.
But neither of these two parties has so far shown much appetite for tackling Scotland’s vested interests and ripping up the nation’s problems by the roots. The solutions proposed by both Labour and the SNP are, frankly, a bit lame, a bit is-this-really-the-best-you-can-do-where’s-the-radicalism? Sarwar has committed to keeping the SNP’s “free stuff”, including university tuition and the baby box for new parents. It’s a fair accusation, which I’ve heard made by more than one Labour grandee, that he is not offering enough of a break with the past 18 years.
There are understandable political reasons behind the Labour leadership’s calculation. Sarwar is a slick, professional politician who talks and acts like one – he is pulling the usual levers and tweaking the normal wires. But this is an era in which growing numbers of voters are looking to frank talkers and non-traditional characters such as Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. There are issues where the electorate seems to be ahead of its politicians – the arguments over unaffordable university tuition being one of them. The voters know that the times are lean and mean and that the existing settlement needs to be rethought. These are circumstances in which people are looking to be led rather than followed, in which they are prepared to accept the smack of firm administration. And yet Scotland’s political mainstream shows every sign of continuing to mollycoddle, to bottle-feed, insisting that things can continue much as they were before. This is not just wrong. It is daft and, in its way, unacceptably cynical.
Ian Murray, Labour’s robust Scottish Secretary, arguably showed Sarwar the way this week when he defended the welfare changes from the front foot. “Look at the figures in Scotland, 300,000 Scots are out of work because they’re on temporary or long-term sick,” he said. “That’s not acceptable to me. I don’t think it should be acceptable to the Scottish public. We’ve gone from a safety net for people to a safety belt, where they get stuck in the benefit trap. The Scottish government can’t see these figures as being acceptable, because it’s a complete waste of human potential.”
If I were leading Scottish Labour, and the polls were sending me the near-fatal message that they are, I would take a deep breath and start ripping up stuff by the roots.
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