LAST WEEK saw one of the biggest blows to the credibility of Boris Johnson’s awful Tory government — and more specifically to Johnson’s personal standing.

Note: this was not because of the reactionary Nationality and Borders Bill, which will make the perilous Channel crossings even more deadly, nor the authoritarian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill for England and Wales, a godsend for any police chief who wants inconvenient demonstrators off the streets.

Nor was it even the Tories’ Internal Market Act which concentrates all powers over state aid and competition policy in the hands of the Westminster Parliament, taking away the powers delegated to the Scottish Parliament — or for that matter, the Subsidy Control Bill also designed to protect “the free market” from the dangers of public authorities using subsidies in progressive ways.

No, this was because Johnson once again demonstrated a snobbish indifference to the fate of ordinary people — this time the victims of Covid — while “his people” literally partied.

It was akin to Al Capone being arrested for failing to pay his income tax — bad, but probably not the worst of his political crimes.

While this political farce was playing out in Westminster, in Scotland the SNP finance minister Kate Forbes revealed her budget for Scotland. The SNP have faced a year of criticism over a poor performance on health and education.

Despite this, there is none of the tide of criticism and sense of crisis encroaching on Nicola Sturgeon and her government that is currently threatening to inundate Johnson. By contrast, Forbes managed to produce a budget that will do little to tackle inequality and a lot to cripple local government in Scotland — with only muted protest from the Scottish media.

This is partly because the SNP have become adept at appearing progressive, while in reality snuffing out the basis for democratic resistance to the ills of free-market capitalism.

As well as extending free transport to under 22s, expanding free-school meals and doubling the child payment to £20 a week, Forbes increased by 68,000 the number of people paying the higher or top tax bands in the next financial year raising an estimated £106 million of additional revenue in 2022-23. Those on the lowest income tax bands will pay £21.62 less than their equivalents in England.

Typically for the SNP, this is enough to demonstrate a difference with England but not enough to make a real difference to the living standards of poorer Scots. The significance of the sums involved can be gauged by comparing them to the £4.6 billion block grant the SNP has at its disposal, guaranteed for each of the next three years.

For local government, there was a real-terms cut to the tune of £100 million of councils’ core settlement.

The likely impact on council services and the SNP’s awareness of this was evident in the complete lifting of the council tax freeze, meaning of course that councils will be faced with the choice of either reducing services or taxing their citizens more heavily just to keep services at their existing levels.

The likelihood is they will probably do a bit of both, with the leader of Inverclyde Council insisting that there will probably be a ceiling of a 3 per cent increase in council tax by all councils, obviously limiting the extent to which they can defend services by this route.

It is not just that councils are losing resources; because so much of the activity of councils is “ring fenced,” they have less and less control of the direction of their local economies and services.

The budget provides £18bn for health and social care, including extra spending of £1bn, but this funding is not controlled by local authorities, despite their responsibilities in social care.

All of Scotland’s 32 councils, including those controlled by the SNP, supported a motion moved by the Labour leader of North Ayrshire Council and committed socialist, Joe Cullinane.

Joe told the media: “Councils are seeing costs rising, including from the Tories’ National Insurance hike and we are having more demands placed on us from Scottish government decisions made in Edinburgh, but we are receiving no funding to cover them.

“There is no funding in this budget to provide a fair pay deal for local government workers, so again SNP ministers are asking councils to cut local services, to cut local jobs, in order to fund a pay award for our staff. The budget is simply not acceptable.”

Here’s the rub: mobilising a campaign against the SNP will be no mean feat. While Johnson is more or less universally reviled in Scotland, with four out of five Scots dissatisfied with his performance as Prime Minister according to a December Ipsos mori poll — and that was before “party gate” — Nicola Sturgeon has no such problems; according to the same poll she is still the highest rated party leader, even if there is more criticism of the SNP performance on health and education.

The Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar also does comparatively well in that poll with 45 per cent of Scots satisfied with his performance. This, however, is not reflected in support for the Scottish Labour Party. It has fallen both in the first past the post constituency section of the Scottish Parliament by 5 per cent to 17 per cent and down by 3 per cent in the list seats elected by PR, to 15 per cent.

By comparison the SNP are at 52 per cent and 43 per cent respectively. If you want to know why the SNP continues to do so well the answer is simple: it’s the constitution, stupid — and Johnson is an excellent recruiting sergeant for the SNP position.

Nevertheless, the Scottish labour movement has to build a powerful campaign against the cuts to local services and local democracy. Just as it was in the 1980s, local government now has to be in the front line of the local counterattack against Johnson’s political gangsterism in Westminster and Sturgeon’s centralising assault on local democracy and services.