Strategy and risk sees John Swinney seal Budget success | UK News

There have been times when it seemed like mission impossible for an SNP government without a majority of votes at Holyrood to get a budget through parliament.

In certain circumstances that could have brought down John Swinney’s administration and triggered an election.

Instead, the SNP’s first budget since throwing the Greens out of government is to be approved with the support of at least four parties.

The Greens, the Liberal Democrats and Alba’s sole MSP will join the SNP in voting for it. Labour will not stand in its way and only the Conservatives will vote against.

That is to the credit of the finance secretary Shona Robison and her team.

Her predecessors in that role, including the first minister John Swinney and his deputy Kate Forbes have struggled to achieve such a rainbow of support since 2014.

So how is this possible when the SNP has been in government since 2007 and their political opponents are desperate to unseat them and usher in an alternative government?

I think the consequences of not passing a budget, the political risks of fast-forwarding to an election and some smart political strategy by the SNP have all played a part.

There has to be a budget. If there is not a new one for 2025/26 that would cause a degree of financial chaos.

The default position would be that only one twelfth of last year’s budget would be released each calendar month – without the increases due from the Treasury.

That would mean the pay rises promised to public service workers like nurses, teachers and police officers could not easily be paid.

No politician would want to get blamed for that and in a parliament of minorities it is not necessarily the governing party that would take the rap.

If not passing a budget led to an election, that might seem attractive to opposition parties if they were poised to win big and potentially take power.

When Labour swept away the SNP across much of the central belt of Scotland at the UK general election that changed the political narrative.

It seemed credible that Labour could do something similar in the 2026 Holyrood vote and return to power after two decades in the wilderness.

Anything is possible but if you were the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar you would not want to risk it right now because his party has slid back in recent opinion polls.

The performance of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government at Westminster appears to be dragging Scottish Labour down and the apparent rise of Reform UK could snatch votes from across the political spectrum.

In short, it looks way too risky for Labour (and the Conservatives) right now. It’s not clear any party is hankering after an early test of public opinion.

There is another factor. You have to be canny to hold onto power for 18-plus years. The SNP is good at it.

The party has experienced plenty of turmoil over the last few years with a trio of first ministers, rows over policy on independence, gender and the environment and the police investigation into SNP finances.

There is also underperformance in a range of public services which has happened on the party’s watch.

None of that can be airbrushed away but under Swinney’s leadership the SNP seems to be rediscovering a focus on day to day issues.

He has reinvented himself as a consensus-building politician and demonstrated a commitment to that approach by giving budget concessions to the Greens and the Lib Dems in exchange for their support after that was arithmetically necessary.

The big budget breakthrough was when Labour said they would abstain in key votes to let it pass.

SNP strategy forced them into that position because ministers included Scottish Labour policies in their draft budget – partly reinstating winter fuel payments for pensioners and paving the way to ending the two-child cap on benefits.

If Labour had voted against a budget including these policies, the SNP would have exploited that mercilessly.

Labour caved in an attempt to neutralise these issues. They even offered to back the budget if the SNP speeded up the policy to end the two-child cap in Scotland which UK ministers are keeping in place elsewhere.

In the moment that appeared to shift a little pressure back onto the SNP.

Officials in the Scottish and UK governments are still talking about how to make that possible.

Rapid progress seems unlikely and political sources in both administrations suggest any hold up is with the other side.

So, the SNP gets its budget through. Labour does not stand in the way without having won any new concessions.

The Greens and Lib Dems can champion the spending they’ve secured and the Conservatives can stand apart, condemning the others collectively as a “cosy left-wing consensus” that they seek to break.

That’s the politics of budget 2025 and a taster of the election campaign to come next year.