GRAHAM GRANT: With ideas so barmy even Lord Sugar would sack her, next year Scots voters will have their own chance to tell Kate Forbes and the SNP...'YOU'RE FIRED!'

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Kate Forbes showed off her renowned business acumen last week when she said businesses could avoid hefty rates by setting up in cupboards.
It's a barmy idea which would see her kicked off The Apprentice – irascible Lord Sugar wouldn't put up with her weapons-grade nonsense.
For bar and restaurant owners desperate for respite from a punitive rates regime, Ms Forbes's less than sage counsel was particularly galling.
Operating from the confines of a cupboard is a non-starter for them, but then they've long been little more than an afterthought for the SNP.
Some of them had fallen for the Deputy First Minister's act as someone who understood the needs of entrepreneurs and business owners.
She was seen as the acceptable face of insular, Left-wing nationalism, as she seemed to realise that thriving firms lead to a stronger economy.
After the SNP joined forces with the anti-capitalist Greens in a pact which ended in disaster, Ms Forbes was viewed as a breath of fresh air, at least by those who thought growth was a good idea.
The scales fell from the eyes of those who had been hoping in vain that she would re-build bridges with Covid-battered businesses, many of them still clinging to survival, after her cupboard advice.
For those who missed it, Ms Forbes was taking part in a Holyrood debate when she was asked whether the rates burden prevented companies from expanding.
Ms Forbes, who is also Economy Secretary, if you can believe it, said the 'rates system often does not take into account the fact that some of the most profitable businesses are the smaller ones'.
She said: 'A start-up can be launched from a cupboard, where there are no rates, while a large and perhaps less profitable business has to pay them.'
Ms Forbes did concede that the rates system is 'based on an older version of the economy, in which the size of properties was linked to profitability, and that is just not the case in our new, tech-driven environment'.
She might have vowed to reform the system, of course, but then it's easier just to tell people to move into cupboards, even if it does raise questions about her relationship with reality, and whether she has one.
An incredulous Murdo Fraser, the Tory economy spokesman, said Ms Forbes 'might as well have claimed Narnia is at the back of the cupboard', while Glasgow-based businessman Donald MacLeod accused her of 'mind-boggling stupidity'.
That's an understatement, given that Scotland is the only part of Britain not cutting business rates for shops this year.
The SNP government Budget unveiled in December means retailers in Scotland are receiving less support than those in other parts of Britain.
Shops will pay £9.1million more than those south of the Border, while offices will pay an additional £6.4million and hotels face an extra £2.5million bill.
In its 2021 manifesto, the SNP promised to ensure that 'the largest businesses pay the same combined poundage in Scotland as in England'.
Many firms are also struggling with the UK Government's hike in National Insurance employers' contributions, which began in April.
For some, Ms Forbes's bizarre statement triggered flashbacks to the dark days of the Covid era when Nicola Sturgeon said the bottom of classroom doors could be sawn off to boost ventilation.
Back in 2019, Ms Sturgeon had claimed Scotland remained 'imprisoned' in the UK and Boris Johnson was effectively locking the country 'in a cupboard' by refusing another referendum on breaking up Britain.
Cupboards loom large in Nationalist ideology, but Ms Forbes is just as much of a true believer in independence as John Swinney and his colleagues, and everything she says about the economy must be seen through that prism.
We shouldn't forget that she once described former SNP Commons group leader Ian Blackford as a pensions 'expert' after he pumped out a stream of blatant disinformation about the UK Government's supposed liability for bankrolling Scottish pensions in the event of independence.
What does that say about Ms Forbes's judgment, or lack of it? She was happy enough to stand by as these distortions and untruths circulated on social media – so why should we trust anything she says now?
As we reported last week, Ms Forbes also questioned why we seem to be fixated with income tax rates in Scotland.
Following a keynote speech at economic think-tank Adam Smith House, she said: 'In Scotland there seems to be an obsession with income tax as though it's the only tax businesses and individuals have to grapple with.'
That supposed 'obsession' shouldn't be hard to figure out, given that her party has ramped up income tax to the highest level in the UK, helping to drive away hard-working professionals.
Scots economist Smith himself wrote that 'every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state' – anathema to the SNP.
Smith also warned that high taxes 'frequently afford smaller revenue to government than what might be drawn from more moderate taxes'.
The SNP's tax-grabs are all in the name of what shamed former Finance Secretary Derek Mackay once confusingly called 'progressivity' - but the only thing the economy is progressing towards is an abyss of the SNP's own creation.
Mr Mackay is remembered mainly for quitting hours before the Scottish Budget in 2020 after it emerged he had bombarded a teenage boy with inappropriate online messages.
But he also admitted he'd never heard of the Laffer Curve, which dictates that revenues can go up if taxes are cut.
Luckily, Tory MSP Mr Fraser was on hand to explain the concept.
There's little evidence that anyone in the Cabinet has a better grasp of the basics than Mr Mackay, including Ms Forbes.
Yet there's no shortage of guidance from the phalanx of spin doctors on the SNP government payroll.
The average £100,000 bill for each of its 17 special advisers was slipped out under cover of the Hamilton by-election last Thursday – amounting to nearly £2million in the last financial year.
Which one of them helped to craft Ms Forbes's bilge about cupboards, assuming any of them did, is unknown, but they did provide some entertainment – even if it was a blend of black comedy and high farce.
The bleak punchline is that we are being led by a combination of the clueless and the incompetent.
But at the Scottish election next May we'll have the chance to tell Ms Forbes and her cohorts what Lord Sugar would doubtless say, with some gusto: 'You're fired!'