As so often, Nicola Sturgeon was both feeling the power and lamenting its absence at first minister’s questions. In the face of a cost of living crisis her government was doing all it could do help the long-suffering Scottish people. But imagine — the first minister often indulges her inner John Lennon like this — what could be achieved if only she, and the Holyrood parliament, had the powers of an independent country!
As it is, she must labour in fields fenced by others. Sure, the Poverty Alliance and people such as Anas Sarwar may quibble that she could do more with her existing opportunities, but they should stop talking Scotland down and hop aboard the independence bandwagon. Why, she boasted, the Scottish government’s measures were already reducing the cost of raising a child in poor households by 30 per cent; imagine what life might be like for all the people, and all the children, after the glorious day of national liberation!
And yet, awkwardly, Sarwar persisted. The Scottish government’s cost of living payments — disclosure, your correspondent has received one — are helping plenty of affluent families at the expense of poorer ones. And, why, he asked, was the SNP opposed to a windfall tax on oil and gas companies?
Fiddlesticks, Sturgeon said. Her party wanted to go further. Why stop at oil and gas? Why not include businesses such as Amazon too? And so, “in the interest of trying to build consensus” — always a warning that a bad idea is on its way — she called on Sarwar to join her in signing a letter demanding the power to set and raise a purely Scottish windfall tax. “Then we can join forces and ensure that it is done and that it includes oil and gas companies, Amazon and other companies that have increased their profits.”
Reader, I hate to break it to you but this was presented as a notionally serious alternative to “rhetoric” of the sort spouted by the opposition. Rarely has intellectual impoverishment been so expensive.