Scotland's fiscal calamity is a harbinger for all of Britain

Telegraph

2 days ago

It should be noted that this particular tax break was much cited by Labour when defending its decision last autumn to make farms subject to inheritance tax. What are they complaining about, some ministers said, when farms can still be handed down from father to son tax-free via the seven-year rule?
Now, even this concession seems to be in the Chancellor's crosshairs.
Wealth and aspiration are under attack across the UK as a whole, not just in Scotland.
But it's even worse north of the border, where higher-rate taxpayers pay significantly more than their English counterparts on a greater proportion of their income.
The quid pro quo for a more highly taxed economy is meant to be better public services, but you'd be hard-pressed to argue this is the case in Scotland. Total public spending last year at 52pc of GDP is at Scandinavian levels, but without Nordic-style welfare and services.
NHS waiting lists are longer than much of the rest of the UK, social services are a disgrace, life expectancy is lower and even educational standards – once the highest in the UK – have slipped badly under Scotland's high spending regime.
State education in Edinburgh is so poor that one in four families makes the financial sacrifices needed to send their children to privately funded independent schools, far higher than the UK average.
Now they face the additional cost of VAT on school fees, though that one is down to Westminster, not Holyrood.
And to be fair, also down to Westminster is the completely insane decision to essentially close down the North Sea oil and gas sector in pursuit of the net-zero pipe-dream.
It might have been SNP policy too, but for an opportunistic change in stance just ahead of the general election aimed at saving seats in Aberdeen and beyond.
The Scottish Government's current position is now a more nuanced one in which new licences for development would be assessed on a case-by-case basis, rather than the current outright ban imposed by Westminster.
It's one of the few things that Holyrood seems to have done right, even if, with the overarching decision made down south, it makes no difference to the outcome.
In any case, the ban steepens Scotland's fiscal challenge. Offshore oil and gas provide some of Scotland's highest-paying jobs; Ed Miliband's assault on the sector threatens lasting damage to income tax receipts, with the growth in renewables unlikely to provide a complete substitute.
The smart thing to have done in maximising jobs and revenues would be to allow the two industries to run side by side, but when did either Westminster or Holyrood last practice common-sense politics?
As it is, Scotland is in the same rut of rising taxation, excessive spending and declining public services as the rest of the UK, but magnified several times over.
The SNP offers no answers on how it would correct the shortfall in the public finances should it ever succeed in freeing Scotland from the English teet.
You might imagine that the cause of Scottish independence would have been finished for a generation or more by the SNP's inept record in government, topped off as it was by the tragicomedy of Humza Yousaf's short-lived reign as first minister.
But then along came Reform UK, which threatens to split the unionist vote and thereby gives the SNP another leg up in next year's Holyrood elections.