A lovely day yesterday with the family to celebrate Easter sets me up very nicely for the final run in. And despite the polls what I am hearing on the door suggest that it’s still all to play for.
On Saturday for example, I spoke with a Scottish Government civil servant who, after 4 years of working at a fairly senior level with the SNP is voting for us. Why? Ths budget. He said we were right to vote against a budget that had 3% assumed but unidentified savings. “It can’t be done without a plan and they have no plan” was his view.
It was that budget black hole that meant we voted against the budget despite the fact that the SNP had added in 25000 apprenticeships. That’s because the task of scrutiny is more than “give me some-thing and I will say “OK” to everything else”. It has be to be about the whole budget. We looked at all the detail and found that the detail just wasn’t there, so we did what any responsible opposition would do, opposed it.
What we do know is that our manifesto is fully costed, with a plan that would mean we could hit the ground running on May 6th and see jobs being created within 100 days. That’s what we want from a Government and that what we are offering the people of Scotland. And I know that they are listening.
