Scottish Labour targets growth at manifesto launch

Growth is the answer to most questions facing Labour. With criticism that its plans imply a big cut to public spending, at least to
those services that are not given protection, it is also promising not to raise
tax “on working people”.

Labour has opted to constrain itself on borrowing, showing
it is serious about economic stability by adopting the Conservatives’ fiscal rules
on debt.

The only way out of that tax-spend-borrowing corner is with
economic growth – generating more tax for public services, as well as more jobs
and higher pay.

As UK and Scottish growth has been slow for 16 years, since
the bank crash, Labour’s means of boosting it are not that radical a change of
direction from the Conservatives’, with the same limit to the amount government can
spend to stimulate growth.

So Labour’s plan depends on government competence, working
better to stimulate business investment, backing the right technologies with an
industrial strategy to back the most promising growth sectors, and using
government funds to invest in them.

In Scotland, a lot of that is about renewable energy, though
a hard line against further oil and gas drilling does not look helpful to
investment or jobs.

Labour also says it will be be pro-worker. The tension
between these two begins with the promise of a rise in the minimum wage. Some
200,000 Scots will be better off, we’re told, but employers will pay for that.

The tensions continue with more workplace rights; on fire
and re-hire, banning zero hours contracts but only if they are ‘exploitative’,
broader parental leave rights.

Employment rights cross the Border, but much of Scottish
Labour’s manifesto is about devolved powers, and an indicator of what to expect
at the 2026 Holyrood election campaign.

Anas Sarwar answered a journalist’s challenge to rule out a
rise in Scotland’s income tax rates, with a simple ‘yes’.

That leaves the next Holyrood manifesto also dependent on
growth, putting emphasis on backing for renewable energy, a faster planning
system, business rates reform to help the high street, and workplace skills.