The Scottish election is becoming a farce

None of the parties are taking us – or treating us – seriously

It was predictable, and indeed predicted. There has been no shortage of nutty policies unveiled by Scotland’s political parties during this election campaign, and the SNP’s proposal to cap supermarket food prices is right up there with the maddest.

Retailers have reacted as you’d expect them to: badly. Lawyers have questioned the Nats’ ability to intervene in the way they intend. It’s been pointed out that UK food prices are already among the cheapest in Europe due to the hyper-competitive market place. As I wrote previously when the policy was announced, it failed the sniff test: a bad idea in theory and practice, destined for the bin. Nothing that has happened since has changed my mind.

Last week, a shaken John Swinney appeared ready to make a swift U-turn when he said he would consider a voluntary scheme instead. Then he U-turned on the U-turn, insisting he would push ahead with his plan to regulate prices if supermarkets didn’t act first. Frankly, it’s all a bit Trumpian, both in its chaotic origins and in the use of the bully pulpit to force independent institutions to bend to the imperial will, or else.

With the manifestos all launched and with two weeks to go until the vote, it’s possible to step back and look at the overall nature of this election campaign. I’m afraid it doesn’t make a pretty sight. It has become a bidding war of giveaways, of free schoolbags and bus travel, of expanded childcare and rising teacher numbers. More of this and much more of that – take your pick. It is hard not to view much of it as fantasy politics. Indeed, one might accuse our leaders of a dereliction of duty. The conversation that should have dominated is one that hasn’t taken place.

You can see it in the frustrated manifesto analyses of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, lamenting the uncosted and/or expensive pledges being thrown around like confetti. You hear it from senior civil servants, staring down the barrel of a £5 billion spending gap in the next parliament and wondering if those who would be their masters have taken leave of their senses or are just too cowardly to face the fiscal reality. And you hear it from voters, who are well aware of the grim prospectus facing them and the evasions of their politicians. Much of the electorate has simply checked out of this unserious debate, and who can blame them?

Government cannot continue to operate in the way it has over recent decades. It cannot continue to expand the footprint of the state, to raise taxes on an already overburdened nation, to pump benefits way beyond Westminster levels, to pay lip service to economic growth and private enterprise while feather-bedding the public sector.

Every economic analyst and think tank worth their salt is warning that a crunch is coming. What this election campaign should have been was a frank conversation with voters about the difficult choices that will need to be made. What will government have to cut to close the fiscal gap? What should it stop doing? How can the freebie culture continue (it can’t, or at least it shouldn’t). People need to be prepared for the harsher climate that lies ahead – they’re not daft and can smell that a change is coming, but responsible leadership means engaging in a national discussion about what that will look like.

No such discussion is taking place, and I increasingly hear from political analysts and economists that it will probably take a crisis before Holyrood faces up to the challenge. That might be one or more universities falling over due to the sector’s extreme funding crisis. It might be the NHS collapsing further. It could be AI wiping out jobs in finance and law, seriously hitting the tax take. It might be a war. We’re a long way from 1997.

What we are heading for in the short term seems likely to be a grisly reimagining of the SNP-Green alliance that did so much damage during the last parliament. The most convincing polls suggest the Nats will win this election, giving them a third decade in power, but be returned as a minority government. In that situation, the expectation is some kind of confidence and supply agreement with the Greens (and possibly the Lib Dems), which will only take us in one direction: a sharp hop to the left. Swinney has sought to move his administration to the centre after the grim experiments of the Sturgeon and Yousaf years, but he will need the numbers which will mean he will need to hold his nose and do some deals. Whatever your political stance, the idea that Scotland needs more leftism and a bigger, more generous state in these tough times is surely for the birds.

If ever a nation needed the smack of hard-headed leadership, a show of intellectual rigour, and a rethink of how things are being run, it is today’s Scotland. The rest of us are big enough to take it, but our curse is to have politicians who show only smallness, complacency and self-preservation in the face of truly momentous challenges.

[Further reading: The SNP remain the party of “free stuff” – and of imminent independence]