School meals Square

Free school meals for rich kids?

Intellectual incoherence and upper class welfarism under the SNP

EFFECTIVE government happens when the ruling political party has a clear concept of purpose. That is to say, has an identifiable philosophical glue through which it understands its reason for being. That glue provides for policy thinking with coherence and imbues a sense of purpose, as it seeks to carry out its mission.

Alexis de Tocqueville, reflecting on how to resolve the perceived crisis of modernity – reconciling equality with liberty – saw the space which birthed socialism. This manifests in the form of redistributive justice; aiming to battle social, cultural, or economic injustices and inequalities.

For conservatives, the intellectual glue derives instead from the belief that liberty itself is impossible without a value for tradition, custom, place and belonging. As the late Sir Roger Scruton explained, “individual liberty [issues] from political order”, and not the other way round. The conservative holds that we are born into society and “burdened by obligations and subject to institutions and traditions”. Thus, in political power a conservative seeks to uphold individual liberties, emphasise tradition and temper change.

But what happens if the governing party suffers an absence of any overarching philosophy? The result is an impromptu approach to policy. Minus any ideological unity, the governing party simply becomes about managerialism. In the case of our current Scottish Government, the SNP is less a political party and more a movement of mutually hostile factions. The SNP is made up of woke liberals, social democrats, social conservatives and free marketeers (let nobody forget the SNP love affair with the ‘celtic tiger’ economies).

Indeed, the only thing holding the SNP’s incompatible factions all together is a mutual desire to avoid their house of cards falling down, before they can wangle their way to another independence plebiscite.

Thus, we are left with a rule by the bland, contriving to satisfy or buy-off whichever ideological faction inside the tent is causing trouble that week. And the upshot is woeful policy tailored to the popular mood de jure. Emphasising popularity and fashionable trends in pursuit of retaining power. A hollow paradox of populism during election times, and identity politics virtue signalling the rest of the time. All in the hopes of maybe one day landing another independence vote.

An example of the inevitable policy incoherence is the strange paradox of SNP tax policy. Nicola Sturgeon explained that it is vital top earners pay higher income tax than their English counterparts because a “fair and progressive tax policies that will allow us to protect our public services, reverse Tory cuts and support our businesses”.

But this is the same First Minister who has decided to provide many of Scotland’s top 10 per cent of earners a tax cut to help their cost of living. According to analysis by the IPPR the SNP has decided to offer £150 council tax discount that “will see almost 1 in 3 of those with the highest household incomes – the top 10 per cent – get a tax cut, despite having a lesser need for support.”

As Paul Hutcheon, Political Editor of the Daily Record observes, “The Scottish Government is also giving £150 to everyone living in bands A-D properties, including people who are wealthy and not in need. That is a choice made entirely by the Scottish Government”.

So, the same First Minister who insists she presides over a progressive social-democratic approach to taxation is granting the same tax cut (£150) to the wealthiest as to the poorest. It suggests the SNP is not really philosophically rooted. No socialist or conservative government would preside over this sort of confused approach to taxation. A conservative government would not make virtue out of high taxation, and a socialist one would not give top earners the same tax cut as the lowest paid.

So, we are left with a Scottish Government eagerly boasting Scottish higher earning income tax payers pay more than in England… meanwhile giving the top 10% tax cuts to help their cost of living. This sort of ludicrously disjointed incoherence in policy is the inevitable result of rule by an ad-lib government. One making it up as it struggles along, desperately trying to buy off the various internal factions across its overstretched and disparate coalition, disunified on every question other than independence.

But this is a First Minister and a government with a track record of practicing upper class welfarism under cover of huge social security and welfare spending largesse. Just look at the SNP’s approach to free school meals. Back in 2015 the SNP boasted its pledge to make access to free school meals from primary 1-3 was proof of progressivism.

Never you mind that those from deprived backgrounds already had free meals and her policy merely gifted the children of Scotland’s highest earners more entitlements. The upshot of extending free school meals provision to all children in the first three years of primary was to benefit the wealthiest. It was families with earnings like Nicola Sturgeon’s, earning circa £218,000+, who ended up making £330 a year savings thanks to her policy.

But then, this is the same Nicola Sturgeon who insisted that wealthy Scots “should get something out of the system as well.” And thanks to Ms Sturgeon they did. In 2015 they got £95m spent on extending free school meal entitlements to the wealthy.

The First Minister has followed that up in the May elections of 2021. Now the SNP plans on spending a projected £230m extending free school meals entitlements to even more wealthy households. Now all primary children will get taxpayer-paid free meals. So, the average taxpayer will be paying for the primary school children of MSPs, doctors, investment managers, stinking-rich capitalists (etc) to get free meals. Not forgetting the free bicycles, free laptops, free musical instruments, free music lessons and free school trips.

And amid all of this largesse on the wealthy, the Scottish Fiscal Commission reports Scotland by 2026-27 will be spending £760m on social security, over and above the funding received via the block grant adjustment. Plus, the coffers face projected income tax revenue shortfalls to the tune of £417m by the same time period. But never you mind that, it’s really important that rich kids get free school meals, and their parents a tax cut to aid their cost of living.

Let’s not worry about Scotland being productivity stagnant for 17 years, and suffering the worst business innovation rate since 2008 either. I’m sure somehow that will all just fix itself. We can just keep spending money to prop up the politics of the neverendum…can’t we?

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Photograph of school dinners from Adobe Stock

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