I went to the SNP manifesto launch, after a decade of paying membership fees I reckoned I should get a croissant back. The EDM music pumped out with funky visuals and when the finance minister appeared there was whooping, when the manifesto author appeared there was cheering and when Nicola appeared there was pandemonium. It’s really not something that is supposed to happen in British politics, but then they’ve made a name for themselves by not being British. I quite like the rock and roll way people treat the SNP these days and the more the English politicians and media continue to attack them the more people will support them. Still we should be careful not to get carried away and ignore the problems they have in governing. So what’s in the manifesto?
The formatting is split between glossy photos of Nicola and easily readable bullet points and a middle document with lots of text in it, a good mix of style and substance.
There is zero mention of independence, they know they can’t win a referendum yet and it’s not going to make them popular to hold another one so sensibly they don’t make much attempt to.
The headline is an extra £500 million per year for the NHS. It does grate with me that coverage of the media doesn’t ever give figures for the budget spending but you can look up the current budget plans for health which show a spend of £12,285million in 2015/16 and £12,977million in 2016/17 so a rise of £689 million. So the SNP’s headline policy is to do what’s been budgeted anyway. The same is true for land reform or community access, it’s just implementing stuff which they already enacted. Nice but hardly revolutionary.
“We will also prioritise improvements to the road network that connects the East of Scotland and Scottish Borders with England – the A7 A1 and A68” They’re good at new road projects are the SNP, less good at maintaining the roads we already have and promoting alternatives to cars such as cycling.