So the Scottish Government’s budget is virtually agreed? So what.

By early this evening (3rd February) reports were starting to come out of Holyrood that a deal had been agreed with the Scottish Liberal Democrat group that would see them support the Scottish Government’s budget when it comes back to the Parliament. This may be tomorrow. If these reports are correct  – and with the possibility of a deal also done with the Scottish Labour group, then the budget will not only definitely go through but possibly unopposed.

Is this a cause for celebration? Well – yes and no. It’s Yes for all the old reasons of pragmatism and doing what has to be done to get something going. But it’s a No because this is the tired old politics of horse-trading that have got Britain into its current position as a failing democracy.

‘Voter apathy’ is really voter defeatism. Voting has been seen to be a pointless exercise for too long. The consequent loss of interest is producing a state which is little more than a nominal democracy and which has long been reaching towards an autocracy often close to fascism. The circumstances surrounding the arrest and interrogation of Damian Green MP, the UK Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, testify to that.

Voters need to see evidence that they have a government that knows what it is doing and that can communicate its strategic solutions to everyone.

If a budget has been drawn up on a sound strategic analysis to benefit the economy of the country in ways fitting the circumstances it faces, what is left of this after a deal done here and another deal done there – just to buy votes?

Where’s the logic in that? What sort of strategic shape survives? There can be no more than a distorted outline with some new and unplanned bulges in some places and some lumps kicked out of it elsewhere? No aerodynamics there. No streamlined instrument to move the economy forwards.

Why should opposition groups asking to see specific things in the budget not be required to show what they would drop from the budget proposals put forward in order to fund their specific wish list?

This has been an uncharacteristic failure of nerve by Alex Salmond and John Swinnney. It smacks of a damaging lack of conviction in the rightness of their financial strategy for Scotland.

The weight of public opinion was behind the Government. People were angry with the senseless opportunism of the opposition groups in voting down the Government budget and stalling local authority and other service agency budgets at a time of painful recession for Scotland. The groups who did this were almost universally seen to be irresponsible and some were also seen to have made themselves ridiculous.

Had the Government chosen not to do deals with any of the other political groups and not even to discuss the matter with them but simply to retable the budget voted down last week, it would have faced down the opposition. It would have emerged with enhanced credit and it would have set Scotland’s politics on a fresh course.

Yes, the deals will ensure a smooth passage for the budget. The Government would have got that anyway – and at a far lower cost. Doing the deals results in the irresponsible groups emerging from the process with some degree of entirely undue political credit.

This outcome has been less of a gain for Scotland than a missed opportunity for Scotland. All that the public has learned from this sequence of events has been that deals rule and strategy comes nowhere. A muted cheer is all that will be mustered.

The photograph above, of the debating chamber in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.