By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 5 November 2013
Chancellor George Osborne’s pledge to keep Britain’s public finances in surplus could drive the Scots out of the United Kingdom, a former first minister of Scotland has told Public Finance.
In an exclusive interview, Labour’s Henry McLeish, who was Scotland’s first minister from 2000 to 2001, warned that a continuing climate of fiscal austerity, with consequences like the benefits cap and the ‘bedroom tax’, was alien to Scottish political culture, and could help pile up votes in favour of independence at next September’s referendum.
‘I’m very concerned about what’s happening at Westminster, and what you could almost call the “poisonous” nature of Westminster politics, and about the implications all that might have for Scotland as we move towards the ref-erendum,’ McLeish said.
He argued that Osborne’s October party conference speech made clear that a rolling programme of cuts and austerity would continue until at least 2020 if the Conservatives held on to power at Westminster.
‘I have always maintained the view that Conservatives like austerity. For them, it’s a state of mind. Their government has a vested interest in low taxes and low public spending, and the very idea of creating a permanent surplus will send a shiver down the spines of many Scots,’ McLeish told PF.
‘People have got to recognise that the Conservative government want austerity to be permanent. Scots don’t want that.
It’s not a race to the bottom, it’s a race to America – that’s their [the Conservatives’] way of government.’
Scots, he said, wanted better public services: ‘Devolution has made a difference – there’s no denying that. It’s made a difference that has meant distinctive pol-icies and attitudes.
‘At Westminster, the Conservatives are mov-ing to the Right – on immigration, on welfare, on their attitude to public expenditure and
public services.
‘Scotland has left behind that kind of nasty politics – I think it was Theresa May who coined the term, “the nasty party”.
‘Scotland has em- braced a more collaborative approach, a more communitarian way of doing things, which is in keeping with our traditions.’
McLeish also saw dangers for the Union in the wider public distaste for politicians and the political process: ‘Overall, you can see and hear that politicians have never been so low in the estimation of the public, politics and the political party, especially at Westminster,’ he said.
McLeish’s fear was that this negative view could ‘freeze together’ in Scotland with dislike for austerity policies.
‘In the run-up to 18 September 2014 [the day of the independence referendum], if there’s at all a perception that [the Conservatives] could win in the general election in 2015, then I think that might drive many Scots into the Yes camp,’ McLeish said.
‘Scotland has real choices to make in this forthcoming referendum. Everybody here accepts that we could be independent, and have income and expenditure patterns that are positive.
‘No one in London should under-estimate the ability of Scots, when faced with an effective choice, to make a decision that they won’t like.’
He saw the so-called ‘bedroom tax’ – the benefit cut for social housing tenants who have more room than they are judged entitled to – as a powerful symbol of an approach to politics that rankled with Scots: ‘For the bedroom tax, read the poll tax,’ he said.
‘Every sense of outrage and concern needs something symbolic to take forward, and the [coalition] government have delivered that in full with the bedroom tax.
‘I think the bedroom tax has galvanised opinion throughout Scotland, causing the people to say, “This is one social security measure too far”.’