Bridge in a Spin - Eddie Barnes

The row over the building of the Forth Road Bridge has highlighted what we might call the SNP's diversion strategy, one patented by messers Mandeslon and Campbell. In order to remove attention from one issue you really don't want people to focus on (in this case, your failure to guarantee the building of a bridge and other related capital projects) you simply kick up a media-friendly scrap elsewhere (the Treasury's "refusal" to pay for it all).

John Swinney isn't a mug so he will have known that his request for an advance from the Treasury to the pay for the Bridge was going to be unsucessful. But getting money wasn't the point of the letter. The point was to put the Treasury in the position of saying "no". In other words, the intention was to change the political frame within which this row developed - from a story about the apparent failure of the SNP's Scottish Futures Trust to a story about the "London's" customary negative attitude to "Scotland".

The UK Government - in the guise of Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy - has cottoned onto this strategy. They has realised that it depends, in part, on them playing up to their role of the arrogant London bully-boy. So now their tone has changed to one of obsequious politeness. Yvette Cooper's letter to Swinney, telling him to go swing, expressed a desire to be constructive, it offered meetings, it was free of any lecturing tone. In its cloying insincerity, it could have been written by Uriah Heep.

So what will happen now? A meeting will take place. Salmond and Swinney will attempt to characterise their request as a common sense request for cash. Murphy and Cooper will regretfully shrug their shoulders and say they can't help. The strategic battle being fought will be about who can come across as the most reasonable.

What we don't know is what the reaction of the public will be - who will get the blame for the impasse? Labour or the SNP? In these unchartered times, with two governments running one country, no-one really knows.

Hamish Macdonell - New Year, old battles

MSPs gather back at Holyrood this week for the start of the new term.
This week's parliamentary business appears fairly routine but, hanging over everything is the row between the Scottish Government and the Treasury over the funding of the Forth Road Bridge.
John Swinney, the Finance Minister, is seeking urgent talks with Yvette Cooper, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in an attempt to persuade her to give him some flexibility in how to pay for the bridge.
The initial signs for Mr Swinney are not good. Ms Cooper has already flatly rejected his plans to spread the payments over 20 years and she is unlikely to move any further, particularly as the two have already clashed publicly over the SNP's local income tax plans.
Mr Swinney may have to find room for compromise somewhere if he wants help from the Treasury, that's how business is done.
Otherwise he had better be prepared to fund the new bridge out of the Scottish Government's rather limited coffers.
There is though, a possible solution for Mr Swinney. The Calman Commission (a unionist plot, according to the Nats) is looking at the issue of government borrowing and may well recommend that the Scottish Government be given borrowing powers.
That would get Mr Swinney out of this Forth Bridge-sized hole but, to do so, he would have to back the Calman Commission and its findings - something no SNP minister has felt able to do so far.
But then again, tough choices, compromises and difficult decisions are what ministerial life is all about ...
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Hamish Macdonell - new bridge, old money.

SO now we know. The Scottish Government has just announced that there will be a new Forth Bridge, but it will be a much smaller version than planned, it will cost less to build and the existing bridge will be pressed into action as a public transport bridge.
The crucial part of this is the funding. The Scottish Government believes that, because it has scaled back on the size of the new bridge, it can now pay for it through the Scottish block.
The new bridge was going to cost £4 billion. Now it will cost £2 billion.
It does seem that the SNP government has pulled a rabbit out of a hat - if it can do what it says it can.
But crucial questions remain. First, where is the Scottish Futures Trust? If the SFT, the SNP's flagship funding mechansim cannot be used for this project, then will it ever be used? Is it now dead?
Second, if the existing bridge is not up to the task of carrying public transport (buses) then the new, cheap, bridge will not be up to the task of carrying all the traffic crossing the Forth. This is a gamble, a huge gamble.
One more thing, though, Stewart Stevenson, the transport minister, said he was thinking about putting trams on the old bridge to take people to Fife. For a government which has been absolutely hostile to trams, this is something of a conversion, on the road to Lochgelly maybe?
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Hamish Macdonell - money, money, money

EVERYBODY in the parliament is aware of the main business of the week, taking place tomorrow, the publication of the Scottish Government's transport package for the next ten years or so.
The key issue is the replacement Forth crossing, how much it will cost and, crucially, where the government is going to get the money from. Is it to be financed out of the block grant (hugely expensive and unlikely), the PFI (massively unpopular with the SNP) or by the Scottish Future Trust (untried and untested and subject of intense criticism)?
But there is another event tomorrow which will be more for political anoraks but is nonetheless important - the Finance Committee's report into the Scottish Government budget plans for next year.
This will not make amendments or anything else but it will set the agenda for the budget discussions and, importantly, it will start the intense budget process which will see bartering and brinkmanship from now until February as the SNP tries to concede as little as possible and the other parties try to get the government to accept as much as possible.
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