While ministers talk up progressive taxes and anti‑poverty missions, thousands of public sector jobs face the axe and essential services remain squeezed — a contradiction at the heart of this budget, says Roz Foyer

I was asked on the television last week whether the latest Scottish Government budget was ‘left-wing’.

On the face of it, there are wins for workers. Measures such as a mansion tax and a levy on private jets are welcome. In fact, they are long overdue. These proposals mirror what the STUC called for in our 2023 paper on ‘Raising Taxes to Deliver for Scotland’ whereby we laid out a clear route towards fairer, progressive taxation.

We also welcome the government’s focus on a wrap-around approach to child poverty. This includes increased funding for colleges, long starved and neglected by the Scottish Government. Ministers also deserve recognition for resisting calls to introduce tuition fees within higher education after intense pressure from sector bigwigs and policy wonks. In addition to free breakfast clubs and supported after school care for school pupils, the Scottish Government, on the face of it, are trying to build a coherent route out of poverty for children.

But there’s a difference between trying and delivering. The budget wasn’t a wholesale, left-wing coup and it wasn’t an unmitigated cash throw at the electorate that some may have predicted.

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But it was certainly electioneering on steroids.

Placing child poverty and the cost-of-living crisis at the heart of both the budget and, by default, the SNP’s election strategy wasn’t unexpected. The problem is though, as the battlelines have been drawn and the........

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