Why SNP will blow chance to undo damage done to business by Labour’s disastrous Budget

Unfortunately, the catchphrase came back to bite him because, although the Democrat-controlled Congress respected the mandate on which he was elected not to introduce new taxes, they argued the letter of his commitment didn’t apply to hoiking existing levies, so up taxes went to reduce the budget deficit. He lasted just one term, with Bill Clinton able to take advantage of what was seen as the incumbent president’s inability to keep a key promise. That it was Bill Clinton’s colleagues who put up the taxes buttered no parsnips with the electorate and George HW was out.

Ms Reeves tried to be clear on Monday that, after her tax-raising Budget went down as well with the business community as a cat-sick pie, she was “not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes”. Wow… that’s some commitment.

It means that every further inflation-busting public sector pay deal while she is in Number 11 will need to be funded from the public purse. And the pressure to continue with big settlements will remain ─ remember, after trousering a 22 per cent increase in September, the British Medical Association’s junior doctor co-leader, Dr Vivek Trivedi, described it as a compromise and if future deals were not above inflation, the government should be “prepared for consequences”.

Given its plunging popularity ratings, Labour is not in a position to start going toe-to-toe with the unions, so the only alternative is to find efficiencies which will also meet union resistance. After accepting a 15 per cent, no-strings rise, train drivers union boss Mick Whelan warned that reforming working practices was something “it was not willing to give away for nothing”.

Oh dear. And if Ms Reeves accused business leaders of not having any alternatives to her Budget ─ which is fundamentally untrue as most of them would have told her to look at her ministerial colleague’s budgets ─ the same could be said of her own party’s lack of any real proposals for public sector modernisation.

Health secretary Wes Streeting talks the talk about reforms, but league tables and firing managers apart, as another US presidential candidate, Walter Mondale, repeatedly said of nomination rival Gary Hart in 1984, where’s the beef?

With the consumer prices index, which includes owner occupiers’ housing costs, rising by 3.2 per cent in the year to October, up from 2.6 per cent in September, the pressure on future Budgets is real and the only get-out from Ms Reeves’ new commitment is that she said it on a private conference platform, not in parliament or in an official document.

She could argue it wasn’t a solemn oath, that it was her honest intention at the time, and if circumstances change, so can her position. However, as the handling of her first Budget has been so appalling ─ accompanied with the revelations about the sleekit jiggery pokery with her CV ─ boxing her boss into a budgetary corner could mean her coat peg will be proportionately shoogly if the chips are down this time next year and further tax rises are deemed necessary. But if there is a new Chancellor, then all Ms Reeves’ bets will be off.

It is, of course, not just down to the Budget and the crippling National Insurance increase that businesses across the UK are fearful for the future, particularly the thousands of small enterprises struggling to break even, but the raft of new regulations contained in the Employment Rights Bill, and others which might follow through statutory instruments.

Companies have warned that the ways through unbudgeted tax rises are wage freezes, staff cuts, higher prices, or all three, and new burdensome employment regulations are an incentive to limit or cancel recruitment, or for small business owners approaching retirement to simply shut up shop earlier than planned. The combination of both higher taxes and employment reform is a recipe for stagnation at a time when the government has said its priority is growth.

It doesn’t take an economic genius to work out that tax larceny and more restrictions on employers’ rights isn’t the best foundation for a confident, expanding entrepreneurial economy. In going for a Big Bang approach to get the worst over in a oner ─ if that really is the intention ─ Ms Reeves has only avoided the same trap as the ill-fated Liz Truss by reading the reaction and, rather than promising more tough decisions, trying to reassure employers and jittery markets that there is no more to fear.

But even if that is true as far as tax is concerned, there is a long way to go for her colleagues to soothe business owners’ fevered brows about employment rights, like full access to notoriously fickle tribunals from the first day in the job.

Both Labour in Westminster and the SNP in Holyrood need to ensure that their actions match the pro-growth rhetoric, and the colour of the SNP’s money will be known on Tuesday when Finance Secretary Shona Robison reveals her Budget, bolstered by the £3.4 billion heading north in Barnett consequentials thanks to Labour’s tax-funded hike in public spending, estimated at around £60bn in the next fiscal year.

There is, therefore, room for a tax-cutting agenda to give the Scottish economy a boost. Ms Robison could, for instance, grant rates relief to hospitality, retail and leisure businesses, like their southern colleagues who have received a discount for the past three years and for which the Scottish Government has already received the means to do so from the UK Treasury.

There is, however, more chance of Nicola Sturgeon leading the tributes at the Alex Salmond memorial service at St Giles tomorrow than Scottish taxpayers getting an early Christmas present.