Louise Gilmour: Robison must avoid pie-in-the-sky recipe for budget and stick to spoonful of realism

Along with his many other achievements, Boris Johnson probably got Secret Santa banned in Downing Street along with office parties.

If not, however, the unlucky colleague choosing a present for the Chancellor in No 11 might be wondering how to wrap a suit of armour.

Rachel Reeves is under siege since her Budget last month enraged critics including OAPs for axing winter fuel payments, farmers for increasing inheritance tax, business for hiking National Insurance and Walter Mitty for stealing his CV.

The Chancellor’s career has come under as much scrutiny as her figures in recent weeks and she must be wistfully recalling those halcyon days leading Nasa’s mission to Mars.

Of course, people asked to pay more or get less are rarely happy and Reeves’ supporters are not wrong to claim her critics have less to complain about than most of us.

It would, for example, take a heart of stone not to laugh watching Jeremy Clarkson clamber onto the barricades with protesting farmers last week despite admitting he only bought his land to avoid tax.

The UK government needs to ride out the storm though because, this way or another, it needs cash to repair public services shredded by years of Tory misrule.

© DC Thomson

In Scotland, finance secretary Shona Robison has her own challenges but, above all, and unlike the Chancellor’s CV, her Budget on Wednesday must be honest and credible. Those qualities have not so far steered this government or its predecessors when Nicola Sturgeon found clear-eyed realism less exciting than a misty-eyed aspiration to be world leading.

So, for example, Scotland was in the global vanguard on climate targets (binned), gender ID (blocked), and liquefied natural gas for CalMac’s new ferries (bananas).

If not the world, we could, at least, lead the UK and, on the SNP website, for now at least, a breathless list of Sturgeon’s top 60 achievements includes, at No 8, the cheapest council tax in Britain.

Big, as the kids probably don’t say, wowee. Nothing comes for free. Council tax helps fund frontline services and, when it is frozen, services suffer.

We might not cough up at the till for prescriptions but they still cost us £1.5 billion every year.

Our students do not pay tuition fees but our universities are keener to teach those who do.

These government giveaways are not something for nothing but political choices and come with hidden costs and real-life repercussions.

We can debate whether the costs outweigh the benefits or how to ensure those with least get most but ministers suggesting we are getting something for nothing patronises us and demeans them.

Talking of which, earlier this year, Robison confessed to deliberately underestimating future public sector pay awards in her financial plans to ensure negotiations with staff unions started low.

No spoilers but unions fought, as we do, for fair pay for our members and the Scottish Government’s Budget, built on low-ball fantasy figures, melted in the glare of reality.

Instead of smoke and mirrors Robison’s priorities should be bolstering public services, protecting frontline workers, and, after the path to a world-leading National Care Service led into the swamp, a minimum wage of £15 an hour to ease the staffing crisis in social care.

Urgent and ambitious investment to shape and support a job-creating industrial strategy for Scotland must also be on the finance secretary’s to-do list. Poring over her draft, she should be deleting the sections on world-leading recipes for pie in the sky and inserting achievable aims and realistic targets.

Honesty is often the best option but, for politicians in a hole, it is the only option.

Louise Gilmour is GMB Scotland secretary