Some history first, I think.
When Iain Gray was elected as leader of Labour’s MSPs, he stated that he would support the government in all ways he could.
Now, in the intervening months, I assume he’s been looking very hard at this indeed, but unfortunately for Iain’s veracity, there’s de’il the sign of any co-operation at all.
In fact, it’s been pretty venomous stuff, and not all of it accurate.
(I’ve been taking the understatement pills again, sorry)
So when this lily laddie (he’s a couple of years younger than me, so I feel I can say that, you know) states that we didn’t keep our promises on student debt, I think he needs to be put straight with a few facts.
First off, Labour weren’t going to do anything at all to alleviate debt, or the Graduate Endowment charge, had they been re-elected last year.
Nothing at all.
Nada (my daughter’s taking Higher Spanish – it’s rubbing off).
Second, we have, in the first 18 months, junked the endowment, saving each student over £2300.
The debt and grant will follow.
Iain ignores both of the above.
I wonder if he would have approved if we’d done nothing and followed his party’s policies.
Of course, we don’t actually know what Iain would have done, because he’s torn up Labour’s manifesto, and replaced it with precisely nothing.
So, in the midst of a policy vacuum, Iain follows orders and goes on the attack.
It’s a similar situation with the LIT.
He doesn’t like it himself, in fact he hinted he’d like to drop it, but soon changed his mind.
Now he wants to amend it, but he’s no’ sayin’ how, and I wonder why that might be.
Subsidising first time house buyers has been dropped by the government.
I opposed this grant in the first place, because all it would do would inflate prices (this was over a year ago, mind) and provide no benefit.
Happily, the government took advice, and decided it wasn’t a goer.
This didn’t stop Iain.
He’s now trying to give us a nudge for dropping a policy which he opposed in the first place.
I swear, you just cannae win with this boy.
You disagree with him, and he girns and whines.
You do what he wants, and guess what?
It’s howls and bellyaching time again.
Now he wants to continue with PFI, despite the mind boggling costs, and to put Scotland in hock for decades to come.
Of course, given that PFI charging will appear on government PSBR balance sheets as of next year, I daresay that he feels that this debt can be sold as a ‘black hole’ to argue against independence.
Despite the fact that it was quite deliberately created by Labour.
This is hypocrisy of the blackest sort.
It is also fundamentally dishonest.
No criticism, you’ll note, of the £500m cut in Scotland’s budget as a result of Darling’s pre Budget Report.
Nor of the fact that the budget will increase by little, if at all.
Tomorrow is St Andrew’s Day.
Iain is honouring this in his own special way, by adding to the unionist chorus of whining and scaremongering which is apparently their only tactic against the SNP.
Now, Iain used to be the Chancellor’s adviser after he was booted out of the Parliament last time, so I wonder if he could use his best offices to suggest that not slashing Scottish budgets as a result of London’s incompetence might be a good little earner in terms of votes.
You’d think so, wouldn’t you?
I don’t think Iain would.
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