Predictable battle lines already drawn for Holyrood elections

The Ne’erday steak pie has barely settled but with the Scottish Parliament election only four months away, on Monday the three main party leaders set out the battle lines on which the campaign will be fought. It makes for a very stark and sobering comparison.

Of course John Swinney made his speech all about independence, because with a track record of, at best, zero progress on the big issues which concern us all – health, education and taxation – a vague promise of another referendum is all the SNP has to offer, especially with the Greens wooing away young separatists with their simplistic zealotry.

Meanwhile, incredibly, Anas Sarwar tried to position himself as the man to stand up to Sir Keir Starmer, expecting voters to swallow a “Vote Scottish Labour to fight UK Labour” message as if they are imbeciles.

But what underpins both is an implicit belief that splurging more hard-earned taxpayers’ money on benefits and higher public sector wages will somehow make us all wealthier. However, 20 years of the SNP, and just two years of a chaotic Starmer Administration in Westminster prove that ever-higher taxes do not improve our lives. And that includes people on benefits who are just stung in other ways.

Scotland is now struggling under one of the highest tax burdens in the developed world, and even places like Norway, Demark and Sweden have lower public spending as a proportion of their national economies than Scotland. We are living well beyond our means, spending £1.3bn more on benefits than received through the block grant, but the crazy left-wing answer is to spend even more.

There is no escaping the basic truth that someone must earn the money they want to spend, but Left-wingers also ignore the reality that allowing working people to keep more of their own money encourages them to work harder and also to spend it because they know increased earnings will not be taken away.

But between Labour and the SNP, the average Scottish worker will be £1800 worse off in the next five years under current income tax threshold freezes alone, so with a genuine tax-cutting approach hundreds of thousands of workers could get that back for their household incomes.

This week, Scottish Conservative leader Russell Fundlay outlined just how different things could be if only Scotland had a government which believed in enterprise, aspiration and just reward for hard work and innovation.

We don’t need to wait for the election, because next week SNP finance secretary Shona Robison reveals her budget for the coming year, her last before she quits politics.

Instead of leaving the expected dog’s breakfast, she could follow our plan and raise starting point for income tax in line with inflation, increase the threshold for the higher rate, and cut the basic rate to 19 per cent for low and middle-income households which would boost take-home wages by £718 a year.

She could abolish the punitive Land and Buildings Transaction Tax which would encourage older people to downsize and give younger people real hope of owning their own home. But of course she won’t.

John Swinney spoke about hope, but it was a vainglorious hope for independence in the distant future, not the hope of thousands to earn a better living in the here and now. And that’s what really matters.