STEPHEN DAISLEY: Sorry, Mr Swinney, but you ARE the cost of living crisis

By STEPHEN DAISLEY FOR THE SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL Published: 19:13, 5 April 2026 | Updated: 19:13, 5 April 2026 One of the advantages of writing a political column is that you seldom have to consult opinion polls. Readers will go out of their way to let you know what they think about current affairs. Not only in writing, either. I’ve had folk sidle up to me in supermarket queues, taxi ranks, and coffee shops to vent their frustration at the state of politics. The owner of a takeaway cafe once buttonholed me for forty minutes on NHS waiting times under Nicola Sturgeon.  I got a column out of it, thank goodness, because my baked potato was frigid and my cup of Tetley halfway to becoming iced tea by the time I got them home. In the past month or so, one issue has come up again and again, albeit in various forms. The struggle of managing household budgets, the rising price of food, the pain at the pumps. The cost-of-living crisis is nothing new but it seems to be worsening. Hence why the Scottish Parliament election campaign has thus far dwelt on personal finances, small business difficulties, and affordability, with the parties vying to alleviate the worst of the economic pain. Which brings us, with glum inevitability, to John Swinney. Because the First Minister wants to claim the cost-of-living issue as his own, and frame a vote for the SNP as the answer to what ails the family exchequer in households across the land. To this end, he accuses the UK Government of ‘sleepwalking into an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis’. He thunders that ‘Scottish households must not keep paying the price for Westminster failures’. He huffs: ‘I’m fed up with the Westminster system that means hard work delivers less and less, while people’s energy and food costs just keep going up.’ ‘The Westminster system.’ John Swinney has been an MP and then an MSP for the past 29 years. Since the age of 33, he has known nothing else. For three decades, he has drawn his salary from the Westminster system, whether from the UK Parliament or the Scottish Parliament which is a creature of the Westminster system. And before his mates protest that he must work the system, thirty years and still no plan for independence suggests the system has learned how to work him. John Swinney is keen to blame Westminster for the cost-of-living crisis The SNP has opted for higher taxes instead of improved economic growth As it happens, Westminster deserves a good share of the blame for the cost-of-living crisis. The last government, which should’ve been done under the Trade Descriptions Act for flogging social democracy in a Tory wrapper, lumbered the economy with swelling taxes, surging spending and the economic harakiri of Net Zero. Yet while Westminster was busy shackling growth and productivity, the SNP was invariably urging it to shackle them even more. They wanted higher taxes, greater spending, and more stringent Net Zero targets. They did more than want it. For at least the last decade, and probably since Alex Salmond departed Bute House, the SNP has ceased to be a party interested in Scottish prosperity. They would like Scotland to be prosperous, of course, but they have stopped doing the serious analysis and making the hard choices necessary to economic growth. Now, in the days of the late Mr Salmond, there was plenty of magical thinking. Let us not forget that the economic case for independence, such as it was, was premised on the robustness of an oil market that imploded not long after Scotland voted No. But Mr Salmond had a background in economics and he was eager to balance an egalitarian social programme (investments in health, education, poverty reduction) with an acknowledgement that the country could not tax and spend its way to prosperity. As first minister, he went out of his way to court business leaders and reassure entrepreneurs that his administration was on their side, and his policy of non-domestic rates relief went some way to steadying any nerves about the first SNP government. Mr Salmond was, like so many of his generation, a political romantic but he was also a fierce pragmatist. He knew Scotland could not become fairer without becoming wealthier. Mr Swinney knows this, too. I’m convinced of it. He spent so long working with Mr Salmond and did so with nary a leak nor briefing against the Salmond strategy of pro-business big-governmentism. The SNP is a very different creature today. Three years on from her departure, the party has yet to be de-Sturgeonised and its policies continue to reflect the former leader’s indifference to entrepreneurship and ignorance of economics.  The Sturgeon strategy was all vibes and, two leaders later, the SNP’s economic programme has scarcely grown more substantial. North Sea drilling could go a long way in helping ordinary Scots  Mr Swinney’s campaign rhetoric on the cost of living might strike a chord with some voters but it will be hindered in government by the SNP’s aversion to doing the hard work required to boost growth.  Moving beyond vibes means making choices and when you make choices there are winners and losers. The party faithful, and especially the Holyrood and council contingents, prefer to avoid making choices. Choices can make you unpopular. John Swinney says we must tackle the cost-of-living crisis. For once, we agree. But it is a material crisis and must be attacked on a material basis. Occasional barrages of vibes and speechifying will not do.  A comprehensive strategy must begin with what the Scottish Government is doing, what it ought to be doing that it is not doing, and what it is doing that it ought not to be. Mr Swinney sits at the apex of a government that prefers higher taxation to increased growth; that is committed to a bloated public sector and a heavily subsidised (and politically on-message) third sector; that will not even countenance the notion of integrity in the welfare system; that does not understand the entrepreneurial impulse and has lost the confidence of those who do; that even now is having to be dragged kicking and screaming away from its ideological aversion to domestic oil and gas production. A government whose handsomely paid ministers and senior civil servants live lives that seldom come into contact with the experiences or priorities of the average Scottish family. A first minister who knows what stimulates economic activity, puts cash in people’s pockets, and sustain small businesses, but is too fearful of the public-sector leftists who dominate his party to pursue such an agenda. A political class that would sooner see financial immiseration for Scottish families than reckon with the economic facts of life. Those facts, reckoned with honestly, would point to a prosperity agenda of personal tax cuts, further relief for businesses, and the shredding of the Net Zero policy, accompanied by intense lobbying of Ed Miliband to grant new exploration licences so what remains of our energy sector can get oil and gas out of the seabed and into our cars and boilers where they belong.  That would go some way to reducing costs for the average family. It can only happen, however, if the man in charge is willing to take the bold, if painful, decisions required, no matter the headaches they might create for him within his own ranks. The first minister gives no indication of being such a man. Regardless of the promises he makes on the election campaign trail, a re-elected John Swinney will not rescue Scotland from the cost of living crisis. He IS the cost-of-living crisis. 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