Reality Check: SNP budget – the smallest tax cut in history
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The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
The SNP announced their budget last week promising to cut taxes for low income earners. Could this be the smallest tax cut in history? Michael Simmons has the data.
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| 0:20.6 | Go to www.w.sp to www.com.com.com.com |
| 0:25.6 | tocourt-slash voucher to claim this offer now. Terms apply. When's a tax cut, not actually a tax cut? |
| 0:33.1 | When it's delivered by the SMP. Hello and welcome to Reality Check. |
| 0:37.7 | Let's spin more stats. |
| 0:39.5 | I'm Michael Simmons, the Spectator's Economics Editor. |
| 0:43.2 | And today I want to drag you all to my homeland, Scotland. |
| 0:47.6 | We're not gonna talk about Nicholas Sturgeon, |
| 0:49.7 | we're not gonna talk about camper vans, |
| 0:52.1 | I wanna talk about the SMP's budget for Scotland that was |
| 0:56.0 | delivered last week. Now they always try to make attention-grabbing headlines when they |
| 1:04.0 | announce any policies in Scotland and I used to work actually in the Scottish Government and the |
| 1:10.0 | sort of hidden mantra was always, |
| 1:12.6 | we need to be doing better than England. We need to be comparing ourselves to the rest of Britain. |
| 1:18.6 | And that was exactly true for the comm strategy of this budget too. |
| 1:23.6 | The main headline that they want you all to take away from this is that after the |
| 1:29.3 | delivery of this budget for 2026, the majority of Scots will be paying less income tax than |
| 1:36.8 | were they to live in the rest of the UK. And by the way, let's be really clear about this. |
| 1:42.3 | When they say the rest of the UK, they just mean England. |
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