Skip to main content
The Morning Star Shop
Yousaf’s manoeuvring over the Budget
The First Minister’s commitments to progressive taxation are contingent on what he thinks will help the SNP electorally, warns PAULINE BRYAN
Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf

THE Scottish government’s Budget for 2024-5 is to be unveiled in two weeks, on December 19 2023. As a Christmas presents go, it couldn’t be coming at a more difficult time for the SNP and its leader Humza Yousaf. 

Six in 10 people think that the Health Minister, Michael Matheson, should resign. Not for the horrendous waiting times for treatment, not even the hugely excessive hours worked by many nurses, nor for the long waits for ambulances, but for his cover-up of how he ran up £11,000 roaming charges on his Scottish Parliament iPad while on holiday. 

Add to that, Yousaf’s predecessors as first minister won’t disappear quietly. Alex Salmond has launched a new legal case against the Scottish government, naming Nicola Sturgeon. Meanwhile the police investigation involving Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell continues.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
MEDIA LOVE-IN: Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon with broadcaster Kirsty Wark (left), ahead of the Edinburgh International Book Festival launch event of Frankly, her memoir, Thursday August 14
Voices of Scotland / 19 August 2025
19 August 2025

On the release of her memoir that reveals everything except politics, Sturgeon’s endless media coverage has focused on her panic attacks, sexuality and personal tragedies while ignoring her government’s many failures, writes PAULINE BRYAN  

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar during First Minister's Q
Features / 30 December 2024
30 December 2024
As polls show Scottish Labour’s support crumbling and Reform rising even among independence supporters, an urgent need emerges for an alternative based on public investment paid for by radical progressive taxation, argues VINCE MILLS
SAVING GRANGEMOUTH: Members of Unite march and rally at the
Aw That / 7 December 2024
7 December 2024
While farmers win support against inheritance tax changes, refinery workers seeking to save their jobs and community face deafening silence from Holyrood, writes MATT KERR