Scottish Budget presents huge challenges for SNP

But it is the National Health Service which provides the biggest headache for Robison. Not only does it account for 40% of her Budget but it is under extraordinary pressure.

The public spending watchdog, Audit Scotland, says the country’s current healthcare delivery model is not sustainable, with a “worsening financial position” and “ongoing performance issues.”

Here too there is a call not just for increased funding, or tinkering with existing policy, but for fundamental reform, potentially up to the point of stopping some services.

Ahead of the budget, Scottish Labour said “every institution in Scotland” had “been left weaker by SNP mismanagement and waste.”

The Scottish Conservatives accused the SNP of having “failed Scotland by making people pay more while getting less”.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton, said the SNP “would have to pull out all the stops” to persuade his party to support the budget.

The Scottish Greens said they wanted to see “a progressive budget that invests in tackling the climate crisis and lifting children out of poverty”.

The Alba Party urged Swinney to reject any proposals from parties “that want to rip up the social contract that Alex Salmond delivered whilst in office”.

Taken together it is all a huge challenge for Robison and her boss, John Swinney, who has promised to guide Scotland out of “a long, dark winter” into the “warmth of spring”.