Pass Budget to thwart Elon Musk, John Swinney urges MSPs

Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservative leader, told BBC Scotland News that Swinney’s warning about Musk was “bonkers”.

While no opposition parties have backed the Budget, Findlay told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland that talk of populism was a “pretend dance”.

He said: “We know and he knows and your listeners know that he is going to throw a bone to the likes of the Lib Dems, the Greens and perhaps even Labour who will back it.”

The Scottish Greens, who have backed successive SNP budgets in recent years, said Swinney’s “overblown” language was “demeaning”.

Green MSP Ross Greer said: “Other parties have a responsibility to carefully scrutinise the SNP’s draft budget and to push for inclusion of our own priorities.

“It is frankly daft and divisive for the Scottish government to claim that such an important feature of our democracy is somehow fuelling dangerous political forces.”

Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said opposition parties had to try to shape the budget in a way that would “best unpick some of the damage caused by years of SNP neglect”.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar accused the SNP of being “the definition of populism” during 17 years of government.

He claimed the first minister already knows he has enough votes for his Budget, but Sarwar declined to say which parties he believed would support him.