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The Herald Scotland
7 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Kate Forbes business and economy prowess is major SNP loss
All too often in politics, economic and business matters are covered by soundbites which are at best banal and at worst downright ridiculous. In terms of the latter, we should remember those Conservative politicians who told us all that Brexit was going to be good for the UK economy, while keeping a straight face. You got the impression that some, though surely not all, even believed the utter nonsense they were peddling. The Tory Brexiters constitute an extreme, but crystal clear, example of just how dismal politicians can be on business and the economy. What is plain is that too much of the narrative on matters business and economic from politicians, having listened to it over the years and decades, tends to demonstrate either a lack of understanding or a disposition to trot out learned ideologies without thinking about what is being said, or both. Ms Forbes, in contrast, has understandably won the respect of many people in the business community and others interested in economic issues. And a significant proportion of these individuals will not agree with Ms Forbes's political outlook, notably her passion for independence. This relatively broad respect surely speaks volumes about the Deputy First Minister's abilities when it comes to the economy and business. While she is not alone in the political sphere in being a serious thinker on the economy, my experience over years and decades from speaking to politicians is this is a far rarer trait than many people might expect. All too often among politicians, coherent arguments around economic matters are absent. Since she became Deputy First Minister in May last year, I have had two sit-down interviews with Ms Forbes covering a broad range of business and economic issues. Unlike many interviews with politicians on such matters - where there is much dispensable because it amounts to hot air or sheer spin with no supporting arguments that stack up - there was plenty of substance and original thought from Ms Forbes across the full range of topics covered. And there was a refreshing big-picture view on the major issues. In an interview in June last year, Ms Forbes revealed the greater income tax burden for higher earners in Scotland relative to the rest of the UK would be kept 'under review', taking into account 'how easy it is for taxpayers to shift'. However, Ms Forbes flagged figures from HM Revenue & Customs showing more people had come to Scotland from the rest of the UK than had moved in the opposite direction, against the backdrop of devolved income tax. And she highlighted the part 'progressive' taxation played in funding the Scottish child payment for lower-income households north of the Border amid UK austerity. That said, when asked if she thought there had been too great a divergence in the income tax burden for higher earners in Scotland compared with those elsewhere in the UK as things stood, Ms Forbes replied: 'No but I think we keep it under review.' Read more She added: 'I was…public finance minister when income tax was first devolved and I recall at the time us making it clear that we would follow the Adam Smith principles of taxation and one of the commitments that we made was to always keep the divergence under review to understand the behavioural impact because I want to be independent but we are devolved and that has implications for how easy it is for taxpayers to shift.' It was a most considered response, on a topic that has undoubtedly been highly controversial among the business community and more broadly over the years. And it signalled what was to come. When I spoke to Ms Forbes again in June this year, she said: 'The First Minister was very clear when he became leader that he didn't believe that you could continually raise income tax, and that we should provide certainty. And that's what last year's Budget delivered - the Budget announcement last year for this financial year. And the programme for government then built on that in May - being very clear that there wouldn't be further divergence from the rest of the UK on income tax for the remainder of this parliament. 'And the reasons for that is because certainty matters in a world that seems to be constantly in flux with lots of global headwinds and challenges of recruitment for businesses. The more certainty that we can provide, the better.' There was much focus on the strained relationship between the Scottish Government and the business community ahead of John Swinney being appointed First Minister and Ms Forbes taking up her Cabinet roles in May last year. Read more Ms Forbes was swift to engage with the business community after becoming Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic. And in the interview in June last year, when asked whether she saw it as difficult to balance maximising economic growth with social justice, Ms Forbes replied: 'No, it is not difficult to balance at all. I have never seen even an iota of difference in our desire for resilient public services, for eradicating child poverty, for protecting our environment, and our economic objectives, for the very simple reason that we can't achieve those objectives without economic growth.' She added: 'So when I look at our mission to eradicate child poverty, clearly we are investing substantially in the Scottish child payment. That investment comes through progressive taxation because of a growing and thriving economy but it can't happen without the creation of well-paid, secure jobs, and that is where a growing economy creates the jobs.' Another measured, thought-through answer. It might seem like common sense to many. However, such sense is not anywhere near as common among politicians on such topics as many people would probably imagine. Labour, for example, has shunned the huge boost to the UK economy that would come from rejoining the European single market, seemingly because such a move is not viewed as politically expedient. And it is worth noting, in a general context, there are significant numbers of people in the business community too who fail to grasp the bigger economic picture. Asked in June if she believed the overall relationship between the Scottish Government and business had improved over the last year, Ms Forbes replied: 'I think so. I mean, the first meetings I had when I became Economy Secretary was with all the business organisations one by one, to understand what their top asks were.' Ms Forbes declared the Scottish Government had since then worked through the first programme for government, then the Budget last December, and then the most recent programme for government 'to try and deliver against those asks'. She said: 'I think the business community understand that we can't do everything overnight, but we can either stop doing things that would otherwise have made the cost of business higher, or do things that lower the cost of business. The most recent programme for government led with economic growth and prosperity. So our sentiment, my sentiment is pro-economy, pro-prosperity, pro-business.' This is a message that seems, on the face of it, like it should go down well with the business community. Of course, this is also the broad message from Mr Swinney. And senior figures in the business community, including those who do not agree with the First Minister's politics, have praised Mr Swinney's willingness to engage and listen, and take action. That said, there is no escaping the reality that Ms Forbes's decision will leave a big gap for the SNP to fill on business and the economy.
The Herald Scotland
07-06-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Immigration warning over 'less than welcoming' statements
The tone of Sir Keir's remarks on May 12 was, as observed by Mr Sheerin and many others, surely something of a surprise. And it was unexpected even with an awareness - having covered this key issue closely over months and years - of Labour's developing and lamentable stance on immigration. The Prime Minister declared: 'Nations depend on rules – fair rules. Sometimes they're written down, often they're not, but either way, they give shape to our values. They guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to one another. Now, in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.' The 'island of strangers' was a striking turn of phrase. Sir Keir went on: 'So when you have an immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse, that encourages some businesses to bring in lower-paid workers rather than invest in our young people, or simply one that is sold by politicians to the British people on an entirely false premise, then you're not championing growth, you're not championing justice, or however else people defend the status quo. You're actually contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart.' Maybe with the benefit of hindsight the Prime Minister's remarks, even though they could have been uttered just as easily by the Tory Brexiters, should not have been quite so much of a shock as they were. After all, Labour has embraced the key elements of the Conservatives' hard Brexit: loss of free movement of people between the UK and European Economic Area nations and the ending of the frictionless trade from which the country previously benefited enormously when it was part of the single market. Nevertheless, Sir Keir's tone was surely surprisingly dismal, even given all of this. Not only did we have the reference to 'an island of strangers' but also this declaration: 'This strategy will finally take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy, and our country.' What seemed clear from Sir Keir's utterings was that populism most certainly did not end with the exit of Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak from the prime minister post. Sir Keir's tone contrasted so starkly with Mr Sheerin's reasoned appraisal of the Prime Minister's remarks and Labour's plans on immigration. We had this from Sir Keir: 'We do have to ask why parts of our economy seem almost addicted to importing cheap labour rather than investing in the skills of people who are here and want a good job in their community. Sectors like engineering, where visas have rocketed while apprenticeships have plummeted.' You would imagine Mr Sheerin, as a veteran of the engineering sector, knows a lot more about the specifics than Sir Keir. And it is worth observing the Scottish Engineering chief executive is passionate about people in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK being trained as engineers. He would love to see the skills shortages which are posing such a challenge to member companies of Scottish Engineering and others in the sector solved. Mr Sheerin is not a politician - just someone with deep knowledge of the Scottish engineering sector. So what did the Scottish Engineering chief have to say in his quarterly report published on Friday? Read more He declared that he found the UK Government's 'latest pronouncements on immigration disappointing', highlighting the detrimental impact on companies of 'statements that feel less than welcoming'. Mr Sheerin hammered home his view that raising minimum qualification levels from Higher equivalents to degree level would 'leave out the skilled trades and crafts roles where we are already in shortest supply: welders, fabricators, electricians, pipefitters, CNC (computer numerical control) machinists to name a few'. That is surely a crucial point. And it is worth emphasising Mr Sheerin's observation that people skilled in these roles are 'already in shortest supply'. Mr Sheerin also noted: 'The shortening of the graduate visa scheme reducing the right to work from two years to 18 months after graduating will not only hit our education sector but also reduce the attractiveness of the scheme for companies who will have a shorter timeline to decide whether to invest in the process to extend the visa of the employee.' This is another good point. And the Scottish Engineering chief executive declared: 'Whilst I recognise that this [immigration] is a contentious political issue across the UK for a whole range of reasons, in engineering and manufacturing in Scotland the reality is that immigration is a vital source of skills and experience that cannot be replaced overnight. These skills levels take years to build - and we should be building them - but closing off the supply before putting in place the actions to do that is another example of an action that will challenge the stated ambition of growing our economy.' The time horizon with regard to building skills levels is important. It might not chime with that of politicians such as Sir Keir, who seems at pains to bang the drum on immigration as Nigel Farage's Reform UK makes a big noise on this front. However, it is a simple factual point that engineering skills do take years to build. Mr Sheerin declared that a frustration for him in Labour's immigration pronouncements was that 'whereas there is considerable detail on how we plan to restrict and close this supply of skills, on the laudable stated aim that we will replace the loss with trained or upskilled UK-born workers, the detail is missing on how that will be achieved'. He added: 'And there is no detail that recognises that engineering skills take between four and six years to get to a starting level of competency. It does not seem an unreasonable request for the get-well plan to carry at least the same level of detail as the take-it-away plan.' This seems like an absolutely fair summation of the problems with Labour's populist immigration proposals. If you were asked to choose whether you think it is Sir Keir or Mr Sheerin who is on the money in relation to immigration policy and its effect on engineering and the broader economy, it would surely be the easiest of questions to answer, any day of the week.
The Guardian
15-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Underdogs: The Truth About Britain's White Working Class review – a complicated class portrait
On 13 November 1968, a 35-year-old Labour politician got to his feet in the House of Commons and had a go at the ranks of Conservative members who faced him. Six or so months after Enoch Powell had delivered his infamously racist 'rivers of blood' speech in Birmingham, David Winnick – who was then the MP for Croydon South – had decided to attack the Tory fashion for bemoaning immigration to the UK from such countries as India and Pakistan and expressing faux sympathy with deprived communities in British cities. 'Many of those who act as the champions of the white person against immigrants,' he said, 'have not in the past gone out of their way to defend the interests of the white working class.' As the Economist journalist Joel Budd points out in this nuanced, enlightening book about the people and places Winnick was referring to, this was the first time 'white working class' had been used to describe a certain kind of Briton. And in that sense, that small parliamentary moment was a prescient glimpse of a subject that would explode half a century later, when hostility to immigration fed into the result of the 2016 referendum on Brexit. At that point, the term 'white working class'' became more ubiquitous than ever, and an insurgent political right made up of Powell's political heirs – split between Tory Brexiters and the forces led by Nigel Farage – affected to speak for a kind of voter they claimed had been neglected and betrayed. Underdogs is based on a powerful argument: that as those political changes happened, the media's understanding of whole swaths of the UK – and England in particular – was warped. In places that had backed Brexit, microphones tended to be pointed at irate older men who probably did not have that much to moan about, while younger, less angry, more economically precarious people were overlooked. 'The white working-class Britons with the problems,' Budd points out, 'are not the white working-class Britons with the complaints.' More specifically, 'a young woman living in a poor coastal town… who is now working in a shop and trying to raise a child without much help from her sickly mother or her erratically employed ex-boyfriend… has very severe problems. A retired miner who is in a stable marriage, who owns his house and two cars, has many fewer problems.' To get nearer the truth, Budd tends to concentrate on such elemental themes as place, housing and work: his is the kind of journalism that works as accessible sociology. Early on in the book, he divides largely working-class communities into three broad categories. 'Heartlands' are old industrial centres, often seemingly locked into decline. An 'enclave' is the kind of place – sometimes on the periphery of a big city – 'that was once overwhelmingly white and working class but is becoming less so'. Most interesting, perhaps, are what he terms 'colonies', to which people have moved from other places. Some are archetypal new towns, but Budd explores Thetford in Norfolk, 'one of the oddest and most wonderful places in Britain' where local factories drew families from east London half a century ago, and many latter-day cliches quickly fall apart. When he talks to the locals, he finds that 'awareness of their own history as migrants takes the edge off xenophobic instincts … in half a dozen trips to Thetford, I have never heard anyone complain that immigrants are failing to assimilate'. The book's best material is like this, all about the messy and often fitful ways that society progresses, and written in elegant, understated prose that acts as the proverbial window pane. The New Parks estate in Leicester, Budd says, was once kept largely white thanks to the reluctance of black and Asian people to try moving there, and plentiful instances of local young men committing shocking acts of racist violence. Now, by contrast, its population is increasingly diverse, and white residents offer level-headed opinions that would gladden liberal hearts: 'It's not good for Leicester to be split into whites, blacks, Asians, Chinese or whatever.' Up close, even people with apparently reactionary instincts can turn out to have more nuanced thoughts, something highlighted by a sixtysomething resident of the same city whom Budd calls John. 'There's two sides now,' John says. 'There's the immigrants, and there's families that were born here.' But only a breath or two later, he offers the opinion that 'Britain's always been a racist country… the English working class thought they were a cut above the Irish, then above the Windrush [sic], then above the Asians.' Even people who might recently have been derided using the dread – and rather snobbish – insult of 'gammon' sometimes turn out to be more complicated than they first let on. Everyday life, moreover, contains plenty of evidence of the quiet solidarity and small kindnesses people who live outside working-class communities barely see. In the south Mancunian neighbourhood of Wythenshawe, some people 'speak sharply about asylum seekers', but a community centre 'was flooded with pushchairs and other donations when word got around that newly arrived Afghan families needed them'. At one point, Budd wonders if the nastiness that defines some well-heeled rightwing politicians is often projected on to places where it runs a lot less deep, meaning that 'the prejudices of the suburban golf club are imputed to the council-estate boxing club… a kind of ventriloquised xenophobia.' There's an occasional sense that these insights should have been developed further: when the narrative flow is disrupted by apparent reprises of Budd's past journalism about the rise and fall of armed robbery and the cult of so-called highly modified cars, it feels as if he is wasting space on things that barely touch his key themes. He also ends up making a series of half-cocked political points that sometimes verge on the risible: 'Britain does not need lots more social housing', for example, is a claim that would probably cause most of the people he encounters to loudly guffaw. But most of Underdogs vividly illustrates the point it was written to make: that in a political era as overheated and mendacious as ours, the plain truths of everyday life need to be heard and understood. In that sense, this book is not just well-timed but admirably powerful. John Harris is the author of Maybe I'm Amazed: A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs, published by John Murray (£16.99) Underdogs: The Truth About Britain's White Working Class by Joel Budd is published by Picador (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
