Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has threatened to resign if MSPs do not back his government's first budget.
Mr Salmond's spokesman said he would take the issue "to the people" if the budget fell at Wednesday's crunch vote.
"Threatened" is a touch melodramatic; if Salmond can’t get the budget through, then I don’t see what other alternative he and his administration would have other than to resign.
He’d probably also not be too overly concerned about the prospect of an early election, the SNP are unlikely to lose any seats, the three Unionist parties would still be unlikely to patch up any kind of governing coalition. Would it not make sense for them then to sit back and let the minority administration struggle by for a few more months, or even years yet? Despite what many English nationalists* would have you believe, Salmond only has been given a finite budget to play around with and whilst he presently talks the good talk, at some stage hard decisions will have to be made regarding how those limited financial resources are utilized.
Much better to hold fire and see how things look in, say, 12 months time.
*Bet you haven’t read about this report in any of the Eng Nat blogs.
Update:
Salmond walked it 64 to 1 with the Labour MSAs abstaining. Which wasn't very courageous of them, if you don't agree with a measure vote against it, if you agree with it vote in favour.
1 comment:
Problem for Labour is that they have a lame-duck leader at the moment. Nicol Stephen's stock (despite his best efforts) is too low. It would also be revolution for the Tories to form a coalition (formal or informal) with Labour.
The last prospect would probably be seen nearly as appalling to Scottish Westminster Labour as the SNP being in power.
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