John Swinney’s first week back at Holyrood since the SNP ’s general election pasting will define his time of office.
He was already facing a stiff challenge to his job at the next Holyrood election and had few cards to play.
Announcing nearly £500m of cuts turns a difficult task into a near impossible one.
He will announce a slimmed down Programme for Government today and by necessity it will be done on the cheap.
Voters already associate the SNP Government with struggling public services and the latest cuts will simply exacerbate the problems.
His only hope in the run up to 2026 is if he successfully casts Labour as the villains.
The Tories were in power for fourteen years and the SNP were adept at blaming the Government in Whitehall for every woe endured by Scots.
Now their narrative has shifted and the tactic is to pin “austerity” on a Labour Government in power for eight weeks.
But formidable obstacles stand in Swinney’s way: the facts
The Scottish Fiscal Commission concluded last week that “much” of the pressure on the SNP Government’s budget was caused by their own decisions.
You will not hear a negative sound from me on one of the main driver’s of this pressure, namely cash spent on social security.
But some of the public sector pay deals funded by Ministers led to people who are comfortably off receiving generous pay rises.
The SNP’s lazy embrace of the council tax freeze was also a bung for the wealthy and worsened the Government’s finances.
And the embrace of universal programmes, coupled with a lack of public sector reform, made the cuts statement inevitable.
Swinney and his team have run out of money after spending billions in areas that do nothing to narrow inequality or reduce poverty.
Blaming Labour also reeks of desperation.
Austerity is when public spending falls, but impending tax rises by Chancellor Rachel Reeves are to pay for increases in expenditure.
Government sources also predict the block grant to Holyrood will also rise after the October budget. This is not George Osborne 2.0.
The Nationalists have been masters in the past at framing the political debate to maximise their advantage.
But voters are not daft and they are unlikely to conclude the SNP is blameless for Holyrood’s budget woes after seventeen years in power.
Swinney, Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond swept into power in 2007 on a wave of optimism.
But the SNP is now managing decline and they have no one else to blame.
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