Be grateful for small mercies. We have been spared this year’s edition of the Scottish Budget faux drama in which a bit player emerges from a smoke-free room to reveal that a deal has been done and can I please have my ten minutes of fame.

Medicines will get through and Elon Musk can return his attention to higher affairs. “If the Budget doesn’t pass,” John Swinney had asserted darkly, “we’re playing right into the hands of Elon Musk and to other populists.” If nothing else, Mr Swinney has set a high bar for the most absurd political statement of 2025.

I’m not sure who the “other populists” are but they must be taken seriously if Mr Swinney fears being outflanked by them. Populism is defined as convincing the disgruntled that they are being done down in the interests of an elite. Substitute “Scottish voters” for “the disgruntled” and “Westminster” for “an elite” and you have the credo of Scottish nationalism in a nutshell. So please, Mr Swinney, spare us the crocodile tears about populism taking over the world when you’ve made a decent living off it for 30 years, to no beneficial effect.

Read more by Brian Wilson

It was all consensus and sweet reason when Mr Swinney was interviewed on radio yesterday. In a lapse of honesty, he conceded that “we now have the resources available to us to strengthen the capacity of the National Health Service”. That is as close to appreciation as a Labour government is likely to receive from our First Minister, so make the most of it.

We learned that Mr Swinney devoted himself to the........

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