Reality bites for SNP's spendthrift teenagers
T he Scottish government does not always answer questions but it is itself the answer to the remarkable query: 'How is it possible to do less with more?'
These should, by rights, be years of fat for John Swinney and his colleagues. Total funding for the Scottish government is 6 per cent higher in real terms this year than it was last year and it is forecast to enjoy increases in day-to-day resource budgets in each of the five years after that. And yet, to hear ministers speak you might think Scotland — a land in which public spending amounts to 55 per cent of onshore GDP — is somehow blasted by the chill winds of 'austerity'.
Last week Shona Robison, the finance secretary, delivered a medium-term financial strategy which confirmed what has long been suspected: the Scottish government is running out of money. Barring some remarkable spurt of economic growth of a sort not seen in nearly 20 years, the government will dig itself a £5 billion financial hole by the end of this decade.
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