{"id":23264,"date":"2023-03-10T19:52:18","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T19:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=23264"},"modified":"2023-04-02T09:29:26","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T09:29:26","slug":"kate-forbes-economic-agenda-is-just-as-dangerous-as-her-conservative-views","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2023\/03\/10\/kate-forbes-economic-agenda-is-just-as-dangerous-as-her-conservative-views\/","title":{"rendered":"Kate Forbes\u2019 economic agenda is just as dangerous as her conservative views"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam Ramsay first posted this article on openDemocracy<\/a>. He argues that\u00a0Scotland\u2019s poorest would likely be worse off under the leadership of the SNP finance minister.<\/strong><\/p>\n

KATE FORBES’ ECONOMIC AGENDA IS JUST AS DANGEROUS AS HER CONSERVATIVE VIEWS<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Jeff J Mitchell\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There has so far been little focus on Kate Forbes’ economic policies. \u00a0There has, rightly, been a lot of focus on Kate Forbes\u2019 conservative views on social issues. What we\u2019ve not heard much of is her economic agenda, which is strange because she says her experience in this area is why she\u2019s running for leader of the SNP. And it\u2019s a shame because, for progressive Scotland, her economic ideology is as much of a threat as her opposition to sexual freedoms.<\/p>\n

In the \u2018National Strategy for Economic Transformation\u2019, a paper published by Forbes last March, she described the next ten years as Scotland\u2019s \u201cdecisive decade\u201d. In that time, she wrote, \u201cwe face a choice to either lead or to lag behind other successful economies all whilst we recover from Covid, deliver net zero, tackle structural inequalities and grow our economy. We choose to lead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe time for brave and bold action,\u201d\u00a0she continued<\/a>, \u201cis now\u201d. So far, so good. But we can better understand what action she means by looking at her record as finance secretary. Forbes put together two budgets: the first at the height of Covid in 2021, which, as with Rishi Sunak, made her popular because it allowed her to dole out cash. A year later, the second delivered huge\u00a0cuts to public spending<\/a>, while leaving tax rates essentially unchanged. Then, she had\u00a0argued<\/a>: \u201cWe need to focus on how the public sector can reform to become more efficient, giving us space to realise our ambitions for better outcomes.”<\/p>\n

Only once she was off on maternity leave last summer, when John Swinney was back at the accounts, did Scotland get the post-Covid budget it deserved, with increased taxes on the wealthier boosting funding for health and social care.<\/p>\n

But the National Strategy\u2019s detail tells us even more about what kind of action Forbes wants. While there is lots of nice talk of a \u201cwellbeing economy\u201d and \u201cnet-zero\u201d, that\u2019s just the clothes the paper\u2019s disguised in. The meat and bones reads much more like a 1990s IMF report, underpinned by\u00a0economic modelling<\/a>\u00a0that reveals three primary \u201cprogrammes of action\u201d: growing exports, increasing foreign investment, and boosting the flow of \u201cinternationally mobile finance\u201d.<\/p>\n

There is not a single mention of tax in the paper, despite Holyrood now having significant powers over it. Similarly, any progressive strategy for Scotland\u2019s economic future should include serious roles for planning reform, land reform and the national investment bank, but these get only vague mentions. And issues like care, transport and education are also\u00a0missing<\/a>, despite a decent understanding of economics being rooted in human realities.<\/p>\n

Instead, Forbes writes, the plan is for Scotland to become a \u201cmagnet for inward investment and global private capital\u201d, an aim that is inevitably followed by erosions of workers\u2019 rights, environmental protections and the public sector.<\/p>\n

And the National Strategy is only the latest example of Forbes\u2019 agenda. Within months of her election to the Scottish parliament in 2016, she was a member of the Growth Commission, which Nicola Sturgeon appointed to look into \u201cmeasures to boost economic growth and improve Scotland’s public finances\u201d, both post-Brexit and \u201cin the context of independence\u201d.<\/p>\n

The whole thing was a fiasco. Its membership included various bosses of big businesses, who\u00a0did not consult<\/a>\u00a0even one representative from a trade union, civil society organisation or environmental or marginalised groups. Instead, the commission \u2013 chaired by Andrew Wilson, a former SNP MSP, then a corporate lobbyist, now a director at Santander \u2013 spoke almost entirely with industry lobbyists. Its recommendation, perhaps unsurprisingly, was to swerve Scottish public policy to the right.<\/p>\n

It argued that Scottish government debt should, in effect, be capped at 50% of GDP \u2013 a lower level of public borrowing than\u00a0almost any OECD country<\/a>. This would be achieved, it said, not by new taxes on the rich, but by\u00a0falling public spending<\/a>\u00a0as a share of GDP over the ten years after independence. If the fiscal rules it proposed had been applied over the past ten years, they would have meant\u00a0deeper cuts<\/a>\u00a0to the Scottish budget than under George Osborne.<\/p>\n

When Scotland becomes independent (as I hope it does), it\u2019s true that this will be a moment of economic uncertainty and instability. But the assumption that such moments should be met with cuts to public spending isn\u2019t just an ideological step to the right, it\u2019s a leap back into the past: even institutions like the IMF have started to realise that austerity just makes things worse.<\/p>\n

Forbes would push the SNP to the right, with an economic agenda closer to Cameron and Osborne than Sturgeon and Swinney<\/strong><\/p>\n

With little thought, the commission dismissed a Nordic-style economy. Rather than placing the transition to a sustainable economy at its centre, climate breakdown is an afterthought. Biodiversity goes unmentioned, as does childcare, which played a central role in the economic case for independence in 2014. \u201cFlexible labour markets\u201d on the other hand, get twelve mentions: so look forward to your zero-hours contract.<\/p>\n

Its proposed currency plan was Sterlingisation: sticking with the pound even though the Treasury and Bank of England say they will refuse any of the formal arrangements of a currency union \u201cfor a possibly extended transition period\u201d. While the commission\u2019s other claims are ideologically right-wing \u2013 needlessly forcing the poorest to bear the brunt of any transaction costs of independence \u2013 and seem to have failed to engage with the past 20 years of lessons from the global economy, this is just downright batshit.<\/p>\n

Scottish banks currently benefit from Bank of England liquidity facilities,helping guard against runs. If Scotland had its own currency and central bank or was part of a formalised currency union, then it would similarly be able to print money to ensure the system remained liquid. But without the capacity to do this, to acquire the sterling needed to stop the whole banking system from falling over, the Scottish government would need to either run a fiscal surplus, that is, tax more than it spent; somehow run a trade surplus without having the cash needed to invest; borrow on the international markets; or sell off state-owned assets in a privatisation fire-sell.<\/p>\n

In a situation that would likely become increasingly unstable, lenders would demand increasingly high-interest rates, until the Scottish government was eventually forced to launch its own currency, not in the methodical way that would be possible were it floated on day one of independence, but in the firestorm of a full-blown economic crisis.<\/p>\n

None of this is an inevitable consequence of independence: many countries have launched new independent currencies over the past 70 years or established or joined organised currency unions. Some small, impoverished states without major financial sectors have adopted another currency \u2013 usually the dollar \u2013 without any kind of agreement with its central bank. But no one has tried, as Forbes and all proposed, to run a country with a major financial sector using another country\u2019s currency.<\/p>\n

It may seem harsh to judge Forbes for all of the commission\u2019s recommendations. She was just one of 14 members, and a brand new MSP to boot. But this report was published only five years ago and she defended it as recently\u00a0as 2019<\/a>. And she is the only member of the commission running to be first minister and leader of the independence movement.<\/p>\n

Resetting the SNP<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the SNP leadership election, Forbes has been pushed by groups on the right. Early in the campaign, Chris Deerin of the centre-right think tank Reform Scotland wrote in the New Statesman that she was \u201cthe best candidate<\/a>\u201d to give the party a \u201creset\u201d.<\/p>\n

Interviewing her for the think tank\u00a0days earlier<\/a>, he described how \u201cin a government that hasn\u2019t always been seen as business-friendly\u2026 she\u2019s impressed many in the business community\u201d. And I\u2019m sure those same people in her audience weren\u2019t disappointed as she trotted out Tory-style creed after Tory-style creed, saying the government needs to let business \u201cget on with it\u201d and musing on how to attract businesses to Scotland through \u201ctax incentives\u201d and eliminating \u201cregulatory burdens\u201d.<\/p>\n

Like a patronising Tory minister, she described the private sector as \u201cthe engine room\u201d of the economy and the \u201cwealth creator\u201d, an idea whose simplicity is appealing but that collapses after closer examination. Take a hairdresser and a surgeon \u2013 both provide valuable services and you pay for them to take scissors to you: one from your pay packet, the other from your taxes. The idea that the barber is creating wealth because they are privately funded, while the medic destroys it because we pool our purchase of their skills together, is patently ridiculous. A more modern understanding accepts that the state, private and third sectors all create wealth, in conjunction.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Deerin, Forbes was also careful to point out that the recent rises in income tax for the wealthiest happened when she was on maternity leave. She called for \u201cradical\u201d changes to the NHS and, while saying it must stay free at the point of use, didn\u2019t rule anything else \u2013 including privatisation \u2013 out.<\/p>\n

She said her \u201cprimary interest\u201d in the education system is that young people should leave \u201cable to participate in the workforce as effectively as possible\u201d. For much of the SNP\u2019s time in government, it has recognised the need to produce well-rounded citizens, with sex education and lessons about politics and current affairs as well as reading, writing and maths. Forbes appears to be hinting at a change of direction, swinging towards allowing education policy to be set by the demands of global capital. Asked about trials \u2018freeing\u2019 schools from the \u2018burden\u2019 of democratic accountability to local authorities \u2013 as Tories have done with academies and free schools in England \u2013 she made positive noises.<\/p>\n

Deerin put to Forbes that the Scottish government\u2019s targets for reaching net-zero carbon emissions are unrealistic and over-ambitious, and, while she didn\u2019t adopt those words, she promised a \u201cchange in tone\u201d towards big oil companies. Speaking to The Sunday Herald more recently, she\u00a0went further<\/a>, saying: \u201cAny transition that happens too quickly will not only damage the Scottish economy in the short term, but also the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to watch the event, or go through Forbes\u2019 political history, without concluding that Deerin is right; as leader, Forbes would reset the SNP, transforming it into a party of the centre-right, with an economic agenda closer to Cameron and Osborne than Sturgeon and Swinney.<\/p>\n

Economic ideas like Forbes\u2019 have historically led to stagnating wages and an accumulation of wealth for the mega-rich<\/strong><\/p>\n

The right-wing media loves nothing more than politicians who can dress their agenda up as progressive \u2013 smiley faces who make the case for serfdom to capital as though it isn\u2019t just the natural order of things, but somehow socially just. It\u2019s no wonder they are obsessed with Kate Forbes.<\/p>\n

I grew up in a rural constituency in the north-east of Scotland, which the SNP first took in 1997 and has won at every election since. I saw how the party built a voter base through the working-class estates in the market towns and mill towns, by campaigning to defend public services, by running as a party of the centre-left. Over the past decade, in my job as a journalist, I\u2019ve repeatedly explained that Labour\u2019s claims that the SNP are \u2018Tartan Tories\u2019 have little connection to reality. If Forbes were to win, I\u2019d no longer be able to make that argument.<\/p>\n

The economic ideas peddled by Forbes have been tried again and again and again across the world for the past 40 years. They have always been pitched by sensible-sounding politicians who make persuasive-sounding, technocratic arguments, implying that they are the grown-ups and everyone else is living in a fantasy land.<\/p>\n

But in reality, these policies have led to historic stagnation of wages for ordinary people, astonishing accumulation of wealth for the mega-rich, and the rapid destruction of the planet upon which we all rely. Even before the pandemic, governments across the world were waking up to this:\u00a0developing industrial strategies<\/a>, agreeing on\u00a0minimum corporation tax rates<\/a>\u00a0and accepting that the arguments for austerity\u00a0had been disproved<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And in recent years, leaders have looked ahead at the challenges of Covid recovery, the climate crisis and the spiralling prices triggered by the Ukraine war, and understood that decisive state action is needed. With investment packages worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the US, the EU, Japan and China, the neoliberal idea that states should step back and let markets rule has been banished to the fringes. Government is back.<\/p>\n

But all of this seems to have passed Forbes by. Ordinary Scots can\u2019t afford the economic implications of her becoming first minister.<\/p>\n

8.3.23<\/strong><\/p>\n

__________<\/p>\n

also see:<\/p>\n

The SNP have joined forces with the Tories to create \u2018green\u2019 Scottish tax havens \u2013 Jonathon Shafi, Novara Media and George Gunn, bella caledonia<\/a><\/p>\n

Kate Forbes SNP Christian Action Research Education(CARE) \u00a0anti-abortion dark money \u2013 Adam Ramsay, openDemocracy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam Ramsay first posted this article on openDemocracy. He argues that\u00a0Scotland\u2019s poorest would likely be worse off under the leadership of the SNP finance minister. KATE FORBES’ ECONOMIC AGENDA IS JUST AS DANGEROUS AS HER CONSERVATIVE VIEWS There has so far been little focus on Kate Forbes’ economic policies. \u00a0There has, rightly, been a lot…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1843,1855,1858,1862,1875],"tags":[4587],"class_list":["post-23264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-capitalists-organise","category-exploitation-and-emancipation","category-oppression-liberation","category-ideology-and-religion","category-scotland-against-unionism","tag-author-adam-ramsay"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mastodon.scot\/@rcfscotland\/110000730267690014","error":""},"views":1141,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23264"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23268,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23264\/revisions\/23268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}