Scottish Labour manifesto: Key policies analysed

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.