>The SNP plans to freeze income tax for the duration of the next Scottish Parliament if it wins the election next month.
>Nicola Sturgeon made the pledge as she launched the party’s manifesto, saying it will help “provide stability to the economy and to household budgets during this period of recovery” from coronavirus. She also announced a “transformational” spending increase for the NHS promising to boost frontline spending by at least 20% – rising by £2.5 billion by the end of the next Holyrood term.
>We want to do more to support people to achieve a better balance and help businesses employ as many people as possible. As part of that, we will establish a £10 million fund to support willing companies to explore and pilot the benefits of a four day working week.
Is there a law somewhere that the SNP can't have candidates in England? I'm sure they could win a few seats down here, both from pretentious lefties like us and crafty retirees looking to send them out of the Union so Boris can be Prime Minister forever. I'd vote for them. Imagine if they got a full-blown Westminster majority and then just left without any kind of referendum, and we still had to do everything they said. That might be less hilarious, but surely it's still worth having a few Scottish Nationalists in Newcastle and Blyth and even Manchester and Liverpool.
The sooner we move the border south of my house in Newcastle, the better. I'd vote for SNP here for sure. And to be a bit less fantasist, border towns up here in Northumberland could legitimately benefit from this.
>We're going to spend vast amounts of money without new tax rises
Well it's a courageous platform anyway. Is Andrew Neil going to point out that the EU would be very cross indeed with a member state doing that and be promptly ignored?
The reason you move to Scotland is because the property market mostly works. There's no leasehold system so if you own a flat then it's protracted renting and even in Edinburgh it's somewhat affordable. Just a shame about blind bidding.
It's not a bad manifesto but I still want them to do badly at this election. The worst page of all in the actual document is the "our record" page. Almost nothing on it was achieved by Nicola Sturgeon: Some were filler, The vast majority were achieved under Salmond, and a few of the remaining ones were opposition legislation that they're now stealing credit for. The 2016-2021 Scottish Parliament was essentially a complete and utter waste of time lead by a government that was bereft of vision. Charting the SNP's legislative achievements over time is like watching the declining achievements of Jesus... or the Labour party.
>>93054 The UK government is presently spending vast amounts of money without tax rises. Ultimately the SNP's plans are just passing that on with the money distributed in more politically savvy ways, since the bulk of their budget is determined as a percentage of what gets spent in England.
The Scottish parliament lacks much by way of meaningful borrowing powers and their tax powers are also mostly crap with the big one being income tax, devolved because it's also the one people hate the most and so the hardest to use.
I'm not convinced the EU would actually care about Scottish borrowing either: Scotland will never be a Eurozone country (even if it does the Swedish thing of pretending it might be one day) so whatever other problems a large deficit causes, it isn't going to affect the Eurozone and "Europe will be upset" seems like a misguided fear. Particularly compared to the much bigger problem of "What if Europe wants a border?"
>>93040 I'm an SNP party member and I might abstain this time purely off the back of their draconian policing and justice legislation.
I want to live in an independent Scotland that is free for everyone, not one that is run by neo-fascists. They are going down a road I don't think I can in good conscience follow.
I don't think I'll post in this thread again, as even thinking about the state of the party makes me depressed but I don't have the hubris of labourlad to keep arguing about it when my hearts not in it.
>>93064 I would second this without irony, pending the release of their manifesto.
They've had a terrible campaign so far but if their manifesto is half-way decent then I want Alba in parliament. Partially for the good faith reason that I think the dynamics of that party lend itself to creating internal pressure for the SNP to deliver more impressive domestic policies or face defections, partially because the way they're hated by the media and other parties reminds me of how the SNP often used to be treated. Alba has given them far more to work with but the way they've all closed ranks against it still disgusts me. Even if I wanted Alba to fail (which, if it was the Wings Over Scotland party for example, I would.) I'd still be disgusted by that style of behaviour. It's a reminder that as a small country with small political circles full of small people, everything is cliquish as all hell.
>>93064 Semi-serious suggestion: If you were previously going to vote SNP on the list ballot, vote Alba instead. Your votes will count for more that way. If you were going to vote Green on the list, do that anyway because Eck is still a cunt.
>>93081 In the interest of taking a gamble I'm going to say that Alba's manifesto will be less mental than the average UKIP manifesto.
(Not so much on the question of independence/EU withdrawal as on domestic policy. My recollection is that even saville said he didn't bother reading some of their manifestos.)
I may have to eat those words on Wednesday, but I'm presently more worried they'll put out a woolly manifesto than a nutty one.
>>93094 That's not evidence that anyone "ITT" laughed at the English for voting UKIP, all it suggests is that Scotland didn't resonate with their policies.
Unless you consider the fact Scottish people didn't vote for an ostensibly English Nationalist manifesto to be intended to mock.
While we're comparing Alba and UKIP, i'd like to have a whinge that UKIP got into the 2016 debates (zero MSPs) but Alba (zero) and, to be fair, Reform (1 MSP) don't get into the 2021 debates.
I suppose the upside is that it means the entire panel gangs up on Douglas Ross instead, but the Tories are still outpolling Labour despite Anas Sarwar having better public perception so a lot of good that's doing...
>>93797 I'm still holding out for the civil war. Sure, we have a stronger economy etc, but they have nukes. Specifically, our nukes. Imagine getting bombed by the bombs that are your bombs, but you didn't want them so you gave them to the people who are bombing you because they never wanted them either. What a war that would be.
>>93799 The stockpile's in Aldermaston though. Sadly they'd have the missiles up in Clyde, but all's we have to do is sellotape a few warheads to an HS2, chuck the driver out the window and hope it's got enough momentum to soar past the border once we let it rip.
>>93096 What happens when all-parties go against one is that said party becomes the de facto opposition and the one that can frame debates. This has consistently happened in Europe with right-wing parties e.g. Sweden Democrats.
That and Scottish Labour are fucking useless of course.
>>93056 I could've sworn we had a cunt-off on Scotland's budget deficit already. In fact the last year you can reasonably look of deficit was 6% higher than the rest of the UK.
https://ifs.org.uk/publications/14982
It's going to be a fun old shitstorm when we look at paying off the cost of Covid. The SNP will no doubt try some brinkmanship with the UK Government but some mighty difficult choices are going to have to be made all the same.
>>93924 Caring about budget deficits is so David Cameron era, the post-Covid statistic to watch will be the unemployment figures, with every country competing to get them as close to 0% as possible.
I am hoping that if I say this, it might come true.
We can kick the can down the road indefinitely if interest rates remain low. The big concern is if the recovery proves to be inflationary, which will create an awful monetary policy dilemma.
>>93927 Right, employment is all that matters who cares if wage growth -inflation makes everyone except the wealthy need a government stipend to subsidize their income after their teensy savings get drained dry causing median value real estate to crash.
The worst possible monetary risk for labor is a post inflation deflation. Unions are going to wake up one day in the distant future acting like they're surprised their pants were stolen.
