Originally published in The National, 26/05/2026, this piece by SSP Trade Union Organiser Richie Venton urges action in the face of forthcoming cuts by the Scottish Government.
THERE “undoubtedly” will be cuts, said the newly appointed Deputy First Minister and Finance Secretary, Jenny Gilruth.
“Ivan McKee (Public Sector Reform Secretary) will drive much of the efficiencies we need,” she added.
The new Scottish Government had barely lowered its hands after swearing allegiance to the King when it announced savage attacks on public-sector jobs and services.
Regardless of how it’s dressed up as “efficiencies”, this response to predictions of a £4.7 billion “black hole” in Scottish Government finances three years hence is a straightforward case of making working-class people pay the price of a crisis they did not create.
The scale of the planned butchery should not be underestimated. Economists predict up to 20,000 job losses. Nor is this the first cut, let alone the deepest.
A minimum of 20,000 jobs were wiped out in the first five years of austerity in the 2010s – creating unbearable workloads for those who remained, drastically reduced services to communities and a reversal in life expectancy.
Since the SNP centralised the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service in 2013, 1239 firefighters’ posts have been deleted.
Communities have been blighted by wholesale closures and unaffordable charges for community centres, playing fields and swimming pools, in a country plagued by obesity and poor health.
Nor should we forget this new bout of cuts lands in a country with 100,000 already unemployed, one in eight older people (130,000 of them) living below the poverty line and 250,000 people languishing on social housing waiting lists – many of them for years.
I am certainly not claiming that Gilruth is as bad as the late, unlamented Margaret Thatcher, but her repeated use of the mantra “undoubtedly there will be cuts” chimes like an ugly echo of Thatcher’s notorious acronym, TINA: there is no alternative.
It’s designed to soften up the public to surrender to job losses and the reduction of services already at breaking point. It’s a cynical attempt to convince millions in desperate need of expanded services and increased job opportunities that the Scottish Government’s hands are tied – the victims not the perpetrators, oh-so-reluctantly attacking the conditions and lives of working-class communities.
It’s not much different in method from the relentless songs of doom from Kier Starmer and Rachel Reeves after Labour’s landslide majority two years ago, when they suddenly “discovered” a black hole that dictated their atrocities against pensioners, children’s benefits, disabled people and the working class in general.
Is there no alternative? Do we really just have to surrender and live with it? Absolutely not!
There are plenty of alternatives to these planned cuts – and the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) had the honesty, audacity and foresight to advocate them during the recent election campaign. Nobody else did.
Certainly not Scottish Labour, who are too busy carrying out cuts at UK level to whinge about some being implemented in Scotland with any credibility. Certainly not Reform UK, who want to cut public spending by £150bn.
The saying goes that pets are not just for Christmas; election manifestos are not just for election campaigns!
The SSP’s manifesto was called A Socialist Action Plan for good reason; we want action based on socialist principles to confront the growing cost of living crisis, which is the cost of profiteering, the cost of capitalism.
That plan is urgently applicable now as an alternative to the Scottish Government’s cuts agenda.
We want the expansion of jobs and services, not their contraction. We want the construction of 100,000 new council houses for affordable rent; free travel for all on publicly owned buses, trains, ferries, subways and trams; expanded health and education; increased provision of free leisure and community facilities … not destruction disguised as “efficiencies”.
With bitter irony, while ramping up their propaganda about “unavoidable” cuts to jobs and services, the same Scottish Government will today carry a parliamentary motion quite rightly demanding a Section 30 transfer of powers to Holyrood to call an independence referendum.
But who of sound mind is going to be persuaded of the case for independence on the promise of more austerity cuts?
Let me be so bold as to make an alternative suggestion to the SNP. Why not link the democratic demand for the Scottish people’s right to decide, and the case for independence, with an action plan for the first 100 days of this new Scottish Government? A plan that will begin to transform the lives of millions?
The Scottish Government needs no additional powers to end 19 years of broken promises to abolish the Council Tax; just lodge a parliamentary bill to axe the tax and replace it with a progressive Scottish Service Tax, based on ability to pay.
The SSP have long advocated this measure, whereby eight out of 10 would pay less, the super-rich far more, and last year £2.6bn extra would have been raised for Scotland’s 32 local authorities. Would there “undoubtedly” need to be a single job lost or penny cut to services if that one measure was taken?
The Scottish Government should declare plans to build 100,000 new eco-friendly council houses for affordable rent. Research for Shelter and the National Housing Federation showed how building 90,000 social rented homes would create 140,000 jobs and add £51bn to the economy within the first year; how the initial investment costs would be fully recovered within three years, and £12bn “profit” to taxpayers produced over 30 years.
That’s a perfect way to fill the Government’s fiscal “black hole” while transforming the lives of millions by creating jobs, apprenticeships and decent living conditions people can afford.
If the new batch of MSPs plucked up the courage to cancel all PFI contracts, they would release £1.25bn for investment in schools and hospitals this year – and save £569 million due to be paid to these loan sharks by 2029. There’s another dent in the predicted “black hole” – but at the expense of international moneylenders’ profits, not our kids’ education.
Furthermore, the Scottish Government has a vast reservoir of wealth it could tap into. The recent Sunday Times Rich List confirmed what we highlighted in our election campaign: the richest 10 people in Scotland have more than £23bn in combined personal wealth – which means a 5% wealth tax on just the 10 of them could raise £1.2bn. That would eliminate any excuse for cuts to workers’ jobs and public services – and the 10 of them would still be rolling around in £22 billion worth of wealth!
The SSP will never cease to highlight the need for such measures on the road towards an independent socialist Scotland, with a parliament that is genuinely for the workers, not the wealthy.