GRAHAM GRANT: The SNP is happy to listen to the experts... right up until they dare to say something they just don't want to hear

By GRAHAM GRANT, SCOTTISH HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR Published: 19:05, 17 August 2026 | Updated: 19:05, 17 August 2026 Michael Gove once said people were fed up with experts. And SNP politicians mocked him for it. The supreme irony is that the Nationalists can’t abide experts either – at least the ones telling them what they don’t want to hear. Political history is littered with examples of the SNP ignoring wise counsel, riding roughshod over it ... or simply trying to bury it. The result is an echo chamber – a party with no shortage of guidance from professionals, which it disregards when it doesn’t agree with what they’re saying. Members of the Scottish Government’s own Tax Advisory Group complained they were being sidelined and not consulted on major tax measures before decisions were taken. The group has since been disbanded – and it’s easy to see why it was silenced. Tax expert Dan Neidle, a former member, argued the SNP’s 48p top rate of tax may have reduced revenue by more than £20million. Mr Neidle suggested the SNP government may have been ‘infected by a disease that you often see on the Left of politics ... this thing seems progressive and good, we should do this thing’. Tax expert Dan Neidle argued the SNP’s 48p top rate of tax may have reduced revenue by more than £20million As he noted last month, the ‘question of whether it’s actually going to have the outcome that you want is either not something that even crosses your mind or it’s heretical to ask that question’. In February, the shutters came down on the Tax Advisory Group. If you’re not backing the SNP, your view isn’t welcome. Back in 2022, Scottish Government adviser Richard Marsh had warned that middle-class families would move away from Scotland because of SNP tax raids. Mr Marsh highlighted a ‘growing gap with higher taxes on higher-paid workers’ and these ‘tend to be more mobile workers with choices about where they can live and work’. There’s now plenty of evidence that the cross-Border tax gap which penalises Scottish workers is driving away the young professionals our struggling economy desperately needs. Last month, analysis by wealth management firm Rathbones found higher earners in Scotland could save more than £46,000 in income tax over five years by moving to England and commuting to work. It said some staff were choosing to live south of the Border and travel to their workplaces in Scotland to avoid the SNP government’s ‘high-tax regime’. So, prescient warnings on tax were ignored – responding to Mr Marsh four years ago, the SNP government said it was asking ‘those with the broadest shoulders to contribute more to support policies not enjoyed elsewhere, such as free university tuition’. But alarms have been going off for years about the state of higher education funding. Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, Principal of Edinburgh University, said in 2025 that the system was ‘broken’, that universities were nearing an ‘economic abyss’, and that the sector would ‘perish’ without an honest debate about ‘free’ tuition and how universities are funded. Edinburgh University principal Professor Sir Peter Mathieson said universities were nearing an 'economic abyss' Yet he and other experts like him might as well have been talking to a brick wall for all that the SNP cared. This is hardly a new phenomenon. Back in 2011, the SNP government fought a lengthy Freedom of Information (FOI) battle over an internal memo which looked at replacing council tax with a local income tax – which has mercifully never materialised. Alex Salmond’s administration went to the Court of Session twice in an attempt to prevent publication of the document. Not unreasonably, the Scottish Information Commissioner ruled the document should be disclosed because it would contribute significantly to public understanding of the policy and its viability. When details eventually emerged, the memo from Scottish Government economic advisers suggested a funding gap of between £366million and £396million under a proposed 3p local income tax model. The legal battle cost taxpayers more than £100,000 before ministers dropped their appeal. The SNP has no problem seeking the authority of expert opinion – but can be much less comfortable when that opinion isn’t what it wants to hear. Sometimes decisions are taken on the basis of advice that doesn’t even exist. Ahead of the 2014 referendum, you might remember the SNP argued that an independent Scotland would continue within the EU. Critics questioned the legal basis for that claim and they sought to discover what legal advice ministers had received. Former Labour Member of the European Parliament Catherine Stihler used FOI legislation to ask what legal advice the Scottish Government held on Scotland’s EU status after independence. Ministers resisted disclosure – and fought the matter through the courts. Nicola Sturgeon later revealed that there was ‘no specific legal advice’ from law officers on the question that ministers had been defending in court. Public money was wasted fighting to conceal information about advice that did not exist – with the legal battle costing nearly £20,000 before being abandoned. Amid the frenzied debate over the GERS statistics last week, which showed being part of the UK led to a record ‘Union dividend’ of more than £2,000 for every Scot, something called the Scottish Currency Group turned up on social media platform X.  For a very long time the SNP has had nothing new to say about the currency of an independent Scotland. This group was supposed to be coming up with answers, but its website contains a startling critique of existing Nationalist policy. It says: ‘The current [SNP] policy of Sterlingisation does nothing to address the weaknesses of the 2014 independence proposition, and ... looks even weaker than it did then.’ Sterlingisation would mean using the pound, at least on a short-term basis, ahead of introducing a homegrown currency. Former Chancellor Lord Lamont told me this bonkers idea would lead to the ‘Latin Americanisation’ of Scotland – though as he’s a Tory he’s easy for the SNP and its useful idiots to write off. Ministers resisted disclosure of Catherine Stihler's FOI request on what legal advice the Scottish Government held on Scotland's EU status after independence Nicola Sturgeon later revealed that there was ‘no specific legal advice’ from law officers on the question that ministers had been defending in court Its own Currency Group is presumably harder to ignore, and its verdict on SNP policy could hardly be more damning. Yet the SNP is still wedded to Sterlingisation – despite its own advisers saying it’s a no-go. A government which continues to push for independence is doing so in defiance of the guidance from its experts – who say that the currency plans are effectively hare-brained. It’s also ignoring the GERS numbers, from its own statisticians, or at least drawing the wrong conclusions from them for its own ends. Of course, the largest group the SNP has ignored is the electorate – most of whom don’t want a second referendum on independence. Yet for years we’ve had the idea force-fed to us that a second vote will cure all ills, which means vital time has been lost that could have been spent on other more pressing priorities, such as NHS and education reform. The SNP can ignore all the experts it wants, and indeed it has shown it needs no encouragement to do so. Ultimately, treating voters with the same degree of contempt carries a higher degree of risk. Many of us may have had enough of experts but we’ve also had enough of the SNP trying to tell us that it knows best – when it clearly doesn’t.