Pensions debacle shows SNP declining into fantasy politics
Wee Krankie, as Nicola Queen of Scots’ more sceptical subjects (a growing constituency) colloquially refer to her, is not having a good year – and it’s only February. Last year was not great for her either, with nit-picking critics claiming to detect terminological inexactitudes in her evidence to the Salmond inquiry (if only they had voiced their criticisms in the privacy of their own homes, she could have banged them up under the hate laws, but claims advanced in parliament are trickier), followed by her failure once again to secure a majority in the Scottish elections.
Now, however, Krankie has a real problem, because her latest destabilising issue hits Scots in their most sensitive area: their sporrans. The exploding of her facile claim that, post-independence, English taxpayers would continue to fund Scots’ pensions has embarrassed the separatist clique, to say the least. Why on earth would English taxpayers decline to pay for Scottish pensions, just because Scotland had become a foreign country? Well, how to explain…? It is probably for the same reason that English (and Scottish) taxpayers do not fund pensions in Nicaragua, or Australia or Kazakhstan. They are… you know… foreign.
The axiomatic nature of that situation might make one wonder what kind of Scots were ever so jejune as to imagine that England would pay for their lunch post-independence. The answer is: the kind of Scots that vote SNP. Let us take one typical example, a Scottish nationalist with a keen sense of grievance and an unswerving belief that the rest of the world, or at least that portion of it situated between Gretna and the Isle of Wight, owes Scotland a living: let us call him Ian Blackford. Deploying all the fiscal insights he acquired from his time at Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions, Blackford declared there would be post-independence negotiations over continuing UK subvention of the state pension for Scots.
Asked on a podcast what would happen to Scots’ state pensions after independence, Blackford replied: “Absolutely nothing.” That would have been a reasonable, if fiscally improbable, answer if Blackford had meant that an independent Scottish government would continue to pay Scots’ pensions at the existing rate, out of current Scottish revenue.
But, instead, he followed it up with the claim that the “commitment to continue to pay pensions rests with the UK Government”, insisting it was “made clear by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the time of the independence referendum in 2014”. Consequently, pensioners in an independent Scotland would be “no different to a UK citizen that chooses for example to live in Canada or Spain or France or anywhere else”.
On a later episode of the podcast, Kate Forbes, Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy, when asked about his comments, replied demurely: “I wouldn’t dare disagree with Ian Blackford, the expert on all things pension, so I would agree with him.” This Stepford wife style of politics clearly suggested the finance secretary had no intention of worrying her pretty little head about pensions, when she had a big, clever man – the expert on all things pension – to make the decisions for her.
As news of these aberrations spread and concern mounted regarding mental health issues within the SNP, She Who Must Be Obeyed was inevitably drawn into the controversy. Sturgeon opted to give aid and comfort to the most delusory canard that has yet been spun, even by her party. She said: “The position is as it was set out in the 2014 White Paper. There would be a negotiation on all sorts of things when Scotland becomes independent: about assets and liabilities. And that would include the historical position in terms of national insurance contributions, paid by Scots, and that would take into account and influence the starting position of an independent Scotland. After that, it is for a Scottish government to be responsible for the payment of pensions.”
That is a typical water-muddying statement from Sturgeon. Under the catch-all invocation of “negotiations”, she attempts to include some undefined “historical position in terms of national insurance contributions, paid by Scots”, to misrepresent the situation as if it were identical to a private pension scheme. It is not. There is nothing historical about national insurance contributions – they are used, along with income tax, VAT and all current revenue, to pay state pensions contemporaneously.
After independence it would be up to the Scottish government to decide at what level it would levy national insurance contributions and taxation and, consequently, what amounts it would pay in state pensions. By conceding that fact in her last sentence, Sturgeon attempted to impose a patina of factual reality on her otherwise fictitious scenario.
But the big porkie was in her first remark: “The position is as it was set out in the 2014 White Paper”, for the white paper said exactly the opposite. Published on 26 November 2013, it made no suggestion of continued UK participation, but declared: “For those people living in Scotland in receipt of the UK State Pension at the time of independence, the responsibility for the payment of that pension will transfer to the Scottish Government.”
In 2014, at the time of the referendum, Nicola Sturgeon gave a correct exposition of the situation: “We would guarantee all of the accrued pension rights for people in Scotland. We currently pay for state pensions. There is no money fairy that sits in Westminster and provides all these things for nothing. Our taxes and national insurance already pay for these things.”
So, how does it happen that Sturgeon, who had a perfectly realistic appreciation of the situation and publicly acknowledged it in 2014, is now endorsing Ian Blackford’s fantasy pensions scenario? Most people thought that the 2013 white paper, which forecast oil revenues of up to £7.9bn for 2016-17 – the actual figure turned out to be £0.2bn – represented Peak Porkie for the SNP and that no subsequent flights of fancy could exceed its shameless massaging of economic statistics and imbecilic optimism. They have been proved wrong.
The SNP’s ridiculous pensions posturing, which has finally removed them from the realm of serious politics, is due to two factors. The first, in an era of alarming inflation, high interest rates, soaring energy costs and a climate of apprehensive belt-tightening, is the need to convince Scottish voters that an independent government would be able to maintain living standards by guaranteeing pensions at accustomed rates. Since to do so is not fiscally credible, that presents the SNP with the dilemma of either alienating elderly voters, a formidable electoral phalanx, if they discover the precariousness of their prospects under independence, or repelling the overall electorate, if it discerns that higher taxation would have to be levied to support pensions and other benefits.
To avert this electoral disaster and a consequent slump in support for independence, the nationalist instinct is to have recourse, under the victimisation rubric, to its customary resort, by claiming that England somehow “owes” Scotland “compensation” for something or other, ill-defined.
That, in turn, illustrates the second factor driving the SNP’s drift away from the politics of reality towards increasingly absurd claims and initiatives. The party is by far the least competent in British politics. It has presided over the decline of Scottish public services, notably education and health, and has snuffed out personal freedom under its hate laws to an extent unequalled anywhere else in Europe. Because of its electoral stasis it is now in hock to a bunch of Green loons set on abolishing all reliable energy sources north of the Border. It has been in power for 15 years.
That all points to the SNP entering an endgame period in its political history. It has failed to achieve its sole raison d’être, Scottish independence, by a wide margin in a referendum; it has made Scotland a shabby, dingy, introverted polity, with its engines of wealth creation idling on half power and its creative potential blighted. Sturgeon’s reputation, among all but the determinedly self-deluded party faithful, is badly tarnished. She cannot deliver the second plebiscite demanded by the SNP’s fundamentalist wing and her stewardship of the nation has been an embarrassment. There will be no more good years for Wee Krankie or her party.