Kezia Dugdale, the forgettable leader of Scottish Labour, is furious that the SNP allied with the Evil Tor-ees to block a plan to raise the top rate of income tax back up to Gordon Brown’s eye-watering 50% rate.
LabourList reports:
The leader of Scottish Labour spoke out in anger after nationalists joined forces with the Tories to block plans to raise the tax rate for top earners.
Last night, the SNP voted with the Tories against a Scottish Labour amendment which would have raised the top rate of tax to 50p in the £1 for those earning over £150,000. Scottish Labour propose this as an alternative to austerity, urging the extra funds be spent on public services like the NHS and schools.
Prior to the 2015 general election, the SNP appeared to commit to raising the highest rate of tax for the very wealthiest, as Kezia Dugdale posted on her Facebook page. Ed Miliband included the taxation pledge in Labour’s 2015 manifesto.
Commenting after the vote, Dugdale said “People will be appalled to learn that SNP ministers who campaigned against austerity have now voted with the Tories to block the introduction of a 50p top rate of tax for the richest few earning more than £150,000 a year.”
“When Nationalist ministers present the budget tomorrow they must not simply pass on Tory cuts to local services like schools and social care.”
Scottish finance secretary Derek Mackay of the SNP will be presenting his draft budget at 2.30 this afternoon.
Speaking ahead of the publication of the draft budget, Dugdale said: “The Nationalists claim to be a progressive party. If that is the case, they will use Holyrood’s historic powers to ask those with the broadest shoulders to pay more tax to raise money to tackle Scotland’s schools crisis.”
“If Derek Mackay fails to do that, he is no better than a Tory Chancellor – and he will singlehandedly destroy any claim the SNP has to be a party of the progressive Left.”
Nice try, Kezia. But while the SNP are pretty dumb, they are not that dumb. Even through their own prodigious economic illiteracy, the Scottish nationalists have worked out that there is little to be gained from choking off economic growth with a snarling, punitive tax designed to hurt upper middle class salary-earners (not the “very wealthiest in society” as they deceitfully claim) while bringing in little if any additional revenue. No, the SNP are all about hurting people in the middle, the striving middle class, instead.
Scottish Labour, meanwhile, seem to think that prancing around accusing the SNP of being just like the Evil Tor-ees will see their recently defected voters wake up, realise the error of their ways and come crawling back with gratitude to their shrivelled, dying husk of a political party. I have my doubts. Aside from the sheer immorality of ever proposing to confiscate more than 50 per cent of anybody’s income at any income threshold, Labour have been shouting about evil Tory ideologues for years at the national level, with little effect. Voters want to see evidence of basic economic and governing competence, not virtue-signalling histrionics accusing the SNP of being “no better than a Tory”.
Scottish Labour would be better off holding the SNP to account for shamefully refusing to take powers over welfare from the UK government in Westminster, preferring to carp and moan from the sidelines despite being a supposed party of government.
But seemingly determined to make themselves as unpopular among as many segments of the population as possible (save those who really do want to live by the fruits of other people’s labour), Kezia Dugdale’s grand plan for a Scottish Labour renaissance involves wrapping her arms tight around the bloated corpse of Gordon Brown’s political career and coming at the SNP from the far left.
Good luck with that.
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