Several moons ago I worked in a place where the management was very keen on further education. Free night classes for all, that sort of thing. There might even have been sabbaticals, though that was probably a cheese dream.
So it was that every Tuesday and Thursday evening I could be found tripping along to the LSE to learn about money and how it made the world go round.
Once in the warmth of the lecture theatre, and after a long day, I would promptly fall asleep. I did read the course books eventually (honest, guv). There is a shelf full of them upstairs, and I would be delighted to drop them off at Bute House marked for the attention of Scotland’s First Minister. Just say the word, Humza, and Prest and Coppock’s The UK Economy, 13th edition, is yours.
I make the offer after watching Mr Yousaf being interviewed on BBC1’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Quite the eye-opener it was. He began by predicting victory for Keir Starmer in the General Election, and declaring that he, Mr Yousaf, would be willing to work with an incoming Labour government. Have you ever heard the like?
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Starmer’s office must have been delighted - or maybe not. Over at Conservative Campaign Headquarters they will have been dusting off those old posters featuring a giant First Minister looking smugly at the tiny Labour leader in their top pocket. I can even see the strapline. Vote Labour, get SNP taxes - all six bands of them. A sextuple whammy.
Back in the studio a panel of guests was invited to chuck their tuppence in. Unfortunately for Mr Yousaf one of them was Sir Tom Hunter, billionaire businessman of this parish.
Sir Tom promptly proceeded to take the FM to school on basic economics. It was done with a smile and good cheer, as is the businessman’s style, but it was a brutal takedown nevertheless. Here, exposed for all of us to see, was Mr Yousaf’s cluelessness about wealth creation.
Asked about Scotland’s six tax bands (compared to England’s three), and higher-rate taxpayers in Scotland paying more than their counterparts in England, he gave the same answer he always does, the one he inherited from his predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon. In short: yes, a minority pay more but that provides free stuff for the majority. That is what Scotland wants and what it votes for.
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The same argument was trotted out in the SNP’s latest party political broadcast (still on iPlayer and YouTube if you missed it). One after the other, a variety of women actors praised all the “free” or extra things on offer in Scotland. Free baby box, the Scottish child payment, free nursery hours, free school meals, free bus passes, free tuition fees, council tax freeze, free period products, free dental care, free prescriptions, free eye tests, carers allowance and lastly, free personal care.
At first I wondered if it was a spoof ad, another wizard wheeze from Conservative HQ in London, but then Mr Yousaf appeared, telling us how all these things could be taken away by “cruel and uncaring governments at Westminster” (not Labour ones, obviously, or not at the moment anyway).
Now, you may believe that every one of these policies is the right thing to do. Three cheers and all that. But they are not free, as in without cost, so why are they continually sold to us as such?
Someone somewhere pays. Someone somewhere always pays. Mr Yousaf does not have a forest of magic money trees at his disposal. Free tuition means fewer places for Scots students, for example. Freeze council tax and watch the axe being taken to services. Money spent in one place is money denied in another.
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There is nothing complicated about this. The youngest spender and saver can understand it. To present reality as otherwise, to say that your party, uniquely, has invented a way of turning logic on its head is to treat the public like children.
For Mr Yousaf and his colleagues to carry on spreading this myth of free stuff is not just irritating, though God knows it makes me want to scream every time I hear it. Such economic illiteracy causes harm throughout public life.
The rot begins with politicians who have never spent significant time in what the rest of us think of as proper jobs. Not for these princes and princesses the 9-5 grind and the scramble to pay the mortgage. They go straight from school to university and into politics, easy as 1-2-3. Know anyone like that, Mr Yousaf?
Once that is established as the norm, the pattern is repeated. Like recruits like. Some of them will make it to the top, where they let you sign off on actual projects costing real money. As you don’t have experience in this area - nor, probably, do the civil servants advising you - it makes it more likely mistakes will be made. Embarrassingly basic ones, like changing your mind about the design of a ferry once the work has started.
When trouble hits you don’t know how to get out of it. You didn’t know how to protect against it in the first place. So you keep digging and the hole gets deeper. But never mind, they’ll never lock you up for it, and your pension will be safe.
The taxpayer will carry on paying their taxes because it is against the law not to, though it is always amusing when politicians say they are “asking” those with the broadest shoulders to pay more.
And remember, if all else fails blame the big boys at Westminster. Mr Yousaf and his fellow economic illiterates have talked a good game and got away with it for longer than some of us thought possible. That is changing. A basic economic rule is being broken, the one that says people will accept paying more if what they get in return is worth it. There has been plenty of time for Scots to see where the money has gone, and where it has so often been wasted. A reckoning awaits.
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