There has, rightly, been a lot of focus on Kate Forbes’ conservative views on social issues. What we’ve not heard much of is her economic agenda, which is strange because she says her experience in this area is why she’s running for leader of the SNP. And it’s a shame because, for progressive Scotland, her economic ideology is as much of a threat as her opposition to sexual freedoms.
In the ‘National Strategy for Economic Transformation’, a paper published by Forbes last March, she described the next ten years as Scotland’s “decisive decade”. In that time, she wrote, “we face a choice to either lead or to lag behind other successful economies all whilst we recover from Covid, deliver net zero, tackle structural inequalities and grow our economy. We choose to lead.”
“The time for brave and bold action,” she continued, “is now”. So far, so good. But we can better understand what action she means by looking at her record as finance secretary. Forbes put together two budgets: the first at the height of Covid in 2021, which, as with Rishi Sunak, made her popular because it allowed her to dole out cash. A year later, the second delivered huge cuts to public spending, while leaving tax rates essentially unchanged. Then, she had argued: “We need to focus on how the public sector can reform to become more efficient, giving us space to realise our ambitions for better outcomes."
