Scotsman Bulletin Tuesday 7 January 2025
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00:00Hello, and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Tuesday. My name's
00:15Dale Miller. I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman, and I'm joined by political correspondent
00:20Rachel Aymery. Rachel, I want to get to talking to you shortly about the Scottish budget,
00:27as we've had some significant updates today. But firstly, just to run through the front
00:32page of today's Scotsman. And we led on Anasawa. He made a pitch on Monday around what he was
00:41calling a new direction for Scotland. But it was interesting that he was speaking specifically
00:45around benefits and the Scottish child payment, and indicating that Scottish Labor would not
00:52commit to a further increase in the child payment. Now, they had suggested that this
00:57may be an approach that they would take. He was talking about the fact that higher and
01:02higher benefits or welfare payments wouldn't necessarily get the outcomes that people wanted
01:08from them. There was certainly an emphasis that pouring more of Scotland's funding and
01:14taxpayers' money into welfare payments was not something that Scottish Labor would actively
01:20look to do if they won the election in 2026. Now, this is a bit of a contrast to the SMP,
01:27and obviously the approach that they've tried to take. So, it puts the two parties at odds
01:32heading into next year's election. Will it be a make or break for voters looking and maybe weighing
01:40up whether they go for Scottish Labor or the SMP, or maybe even another party? Time will probably
01:45tell on that. But there was some criticism, probably unsurprisingly, coming from the SMP
01:51around that stance. We also had the latest on the Golden Globes yesterday, and Starmer addressing
01:58ongoing criticism from Elon Musk. You can read all those stories effectively at scotsman.com as well.
02:04Rachel, circling around to the budget, we did have John Swinney speaking yesterday,
02:10and he sort of set the tone around the Scottish budget by saying if people tried to block it,
02:16that it may have a bad knock-on impact for the NHS because the funding allocate wouldn't be
02:23passed on. But you do have an update to report on in that area today.
02:27Yes, so yesterday we had First Minister John Swinney making the speech where he was still
02:32trying to put out a pitch to the opposition parties to say, you must back my budget so it
02:36can pass. Let's remember the SMP is a minority government here in Hollywood. But as of this
02:41morning, we now have pretty much confirmation that the budget will be passed. And that's because
02:47the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, has confirmed that his party will abstain from voting
02:52on this budget. Given the parliamentary arithmetic and how it all works, that gives the SMP enough
02:58to get their budget through. So all this sort of worry over the past month or so about how will
03:05the budget get passed, which parties are going to support it, what will Labour do, what will
03:08Conservatives do, it kind of all seems to have now just fizzled out because we know it will now pass
03:13because Labour are going to take that step back and not vote for it. We've already had some reaction
03:18on social media from the Finance Secretary Shona Robison saying that, I mean she must be pleased
03:23because it's definitely going ahead now, but very much sort of saying she doesn't understand why
03:27Labour are choosing to do this because it won't sit well with Labour voters to seem to not be
03:31voting for a budget that has some of the policies, which is what your opinion is in it. So
03:36big development this morning in terms of what's going to happen over the next few months when it
03:39comes to the budget. Rachel, there's been a lot of political posturing around this. It was
03:44interesting, the response to John Swinney's speech yesterday from both Anas Sarwar and from Russell
03:49Finlay from the Tories was, look, the SMP are making something out of this that doesn't exist
03:56really, that the budget was always highly likely to pass. Maybe with some tweaks to the negotiation
04:02we now, as your reports say, that is going to take place. Do you think voters really
04:08care at the end of the day or do they care, you know, what's practically in the budget at the end
04:13of the day? I think we'll need to see if there's any real life impacts on the back of this. I think
04:18one thing that might see a difference in is local government funding. That funding will presumably
04:23be spent on things that really do impact your day-to-day lives, like schools, library closures,
04:29road maintenance, bin collections, those sorts of things. So you might start to see some differences
04:34there, if the money does get spent in the right place, of course. But I was listening to
04:39Radio Scotland this morning, they were having a phone-in of people talking about the budget and
04:43there was a big theme, whether you agreed with it or not, everyone's just a bit despondent
04:47and a bit sort of fed up with things just not working, public services not being reliable.
04:52So there is this sort of feeling of despondency amongst the public at the moment and I think the
04:57parties are aware of that and they're now using the budget negotiations as a sort of platform to
05:02campaign for the election next year. And as far as we're definitely doing that, very much saying,
05:07you know, if you want something done then vote for us next year. So I think that's more of what
05:11we're now going to see, is we're now going to see the parties using this as an opportunity to
05:16be on their soapbox and set out their election campaigns. It feels strange when it's still 18
05:21months away to this election but the campaigning started months ago, we're really now looking at
05:25ramping up the campaigning for the Scottish election next year. And when you listen to
05:31debates in Holyrood, recently it has kind of felt like a campaigning parliament rather than trying
05:35to get down to the business of the day-to-day work. It feels like campaigning for the election
05:39is sort of taking priority quite often, particularly F&Qs on a Thursday afternoon.
05:45Rachel, I've got this mental image of it's almost an ongoing arm wrestle at the moment
05:49between Anasuwa and John Splinney. You know, the S&P, the poll showed made some gains leading into
05:54Christmas but we are still a long way out. Do you think ultimately Anasuwa and the picture for him
06:02leading into 2026 will not be determined by him, it will be determined by what's happening down
06:07south? Is that a fair argument to say and is it a difficult one for him where he probably doesn't
06:13have full control over the way the voters see his party because of how Keir Starmer's government's
06:18being judged? I think it definitely will play a big impact here. If you looked at the polls around
06:23the summertime general election time, Scottish people were doing very well in terms of a Holyrood
06:28polling. They were kind of neck and neck with the S&P, there was even some suggestions that
06:33Labour would even be the largest party in Scotland and that Anasuwa might get his dream of becoming
06:38First Minister. But as more decisions are made in Westminster that are unpopular, more people are
06:44maybe losing trust in the Labour government in Westminster, particularly on things such as
06:50winter fuel payments, no compensation for wall street for example as well. You started to see
06:55the Scottish Labour's polling in Holyrood going down and down and down over the months and they're
07:00now at a point where they are now slipping back quite significantly behind the S&P in terms of
07:05the polls. I think it was Professor Sir John Curtis yesterday morning as he was saying, they're now
07:09back at the same sort of level they were in 2021 which is of course nowhere near where Labour
07:14want to be at this point in time. They want to be back up at the point where they are challenging
07:19the S&P for that top spot in government. Of course there is still 18 months to go, there's still
07:25time for Labour to make these big gains and to get people back on site, there is still time for the
07:30S&P to fall back down if people are disappointed in what they see, so there's still a lot of time
07:35to go around. But yeah I think there's a lot of work that probably all parties need to do at the
07:40moment because even the S&P, even if the latest polling shows that they're still way ahead,
07:45even if that does play out in the election it's still a much reduced numbers of what they are
07:49just now, so it's still not a good story for them. It's still not good for the main
07:54parties to be perfectly honest. I've got my feeling that, well UK Labour and Scottish Labour might
08:00have their fingers and toes crossed that the economy, the economic picture improves because
08:05they sold a tough budget, we had inflation creep up again in the lead up to Christmas. If things
08:11start turning positive then it may change the perception of how things are viewed over the
08:17next 12 months. It will be one for all. Absolutely because if you think about it, when they first
08:22came into government I think people did give them a bit of wiggle room, there was understanding there
08:26that they've had a bad inheritance, that they've only just got their feet in the door after a long
08:30time out of government. But when it gets to this summer, when it gets to the year in government
08:34people are not going to be pleading for forgiving, they're going to be expecting some
08:37hard results and some more cash in their pockets. You can read the story from Rachel about the
08:43budget and just what that means in terms of Labour's position and just a reminder of what
08:48is actually in that budget as well at scotsman.com. You can get all the latest political coverage
08:55by clicking on the politics tab, it's in the navigation bar which you can access and get
08:59hold of via the homepage. Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, more platforms
09:06than you can count and go out and buy a copy of the paper tomorrow if you like to thumb through
09:13in the traditional sense to get your news. Rachel thanks to you and thanks to everyone else for
09:17joining us. Bye bye.