SNP ‘significantly’ more Tory than the Tories

I don’t doubt that Tom Wills is sincere when he rails against austerity, and that he wants to tackle the problems of poverty and inequality. The problem is that he is out of step with his chosen party (Slightly less Tory than the Tories; SN, 6 December 2019).

Last week, the Institute for Fiscal Studies was the latest reputable independent organisation to make clear the risk of even higher taxes and greater spending cuts, with increasing inequality under the nationalists, directly due to their obsessive independence drive.

These findings are based on the SNP’s own growth commission commitments and their uncosted manifesto, so there is nowhere to hide.

Tom describes Alistair Carmichael as “slightly less Tory than the Tories”. If a willingness to embrace austerity is the yardstick for that judgement then he and the SNP are significantly more Tory than the Tories.

A nationalist, of course, would see this sort of austerity as the price worth paying for their “freedom”. Tom claims that he is not really a nationalist. If that is the case, why does he support policies that run so far contrary to the ends in which he claims to believe?

Alistair Christie-Henry
Bressay