Scottish National Party’s anti-austerity hypocrisy exposed
By Stephen Alexander of WSWS
The growth in support for the Scottish National Party (SNP) is largely due to its professed opposition to the austerity policies of successive British governments, both Conservative-Liberal Democrat and Labour.
The party has pledged to reverse spending cuts and establish a fairer society by renegotiating Scotland’s 300-year-old status within the United Kingdom. Now the third-largest party in the House of Commons after Labour, the SNP is seeking to position itself as the only “real” and “progressive” opposition to the Conservative government, in the words of the party’s parliamentary leader Angus Robertson.
No one should be fooled by this.
The progressive pretensions of the SNP are a cynical cover for core neo-liberal policies aimed at radically reconfiguring social relations in favour of big business. Such policies would facilitate Scottish capitalism in outcompeting rivals in the rest of the UK and internationally as an investment location, a centre of financial speculation and as a tax haven for the world’s super rich. The SNP has already gone a long way toward this goal within the limited powers exercised by the devolved Scottish parliament, which it has led since 2007.
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