Programme for government is Steady-On John at work

With his latest programme for government, John Swinney has delivered the equivalent of a tenner in a birthday card – a restrained package; unshowy, but with your wallet in mind.

The tenner-in-a-card is a classic gift, deliverable at short notice and generic enough to give to almost anyone. It’s a present that says ‘I want you to like this, but I haven’t put too much thought or effort into it’.

“Is that it?” asked Anas Sarwar, uttering aloud the question that so many recipients of the tenner-in-a-card have asked themselves inwardly. “Is that the best he can do?”

Likely not. But the package satisfies the brief and though the recipient will likely not remember exactly what they got in 12 months’ time, they’ll remember it was something decent.

In this PfG, delivered four months early to allow for a year’s worth of delivery time ahead of the opening of the polls in 2026, ‘something decent’ is exactly the point. Because when voters turn out to mark their ballots for the next tranche of MSPs, they will likely do so with their bank balances in mind.

For many of us, those bank balances are feeling the strain right now. Prices of basic goods are still high enough to cause remark in supermarket aisles as Brexit lasting impact, combined with other global economic forces, create lingering fear about where our national finances are going.

At local level, hundreds of redundancy notices have been issued in Grangemouth, where our only oil refinery has now ceased production. At regional level, local council tax hikes are in effect. At country-wide level, energy prices continue to burn into monthly household incomes.

Then there are the UK Government policy shifts taken to reduce the social security payments to particular groups, from pensioners to disabled people. While the Scottish Government has mitigated some of this, while the minimum wage has been lifted and while there remains debate over whether or not the best-off retirees should be given the same winter fuel entitlement as their poorer counterparts, the changes contribute to the sense that times are tight. That rather than delivering on its promise of ‘change’, the Labour government has short-changed the people.

The PfG speaks to that sentiment, with its “best-in-the-UK cost-of-living guarantee” on the continuation of free prescriptions, eye exams, bus travel, university tuition and more. Those measures aren’t new, but we’re told they will be protected and the bow they are tied up in aims to convince the public that they would, without the SNP, be worse-off, so they better vote SNP again at the next time of asking. With the abolition of peak rail fares, Swinney provides a sweetener for the commuting public and reverses the unpopular return of the rush-hour premiums last September.

There is more, of course – a national regeneration fund to support community renewal and job delivery; affordable housing measures; an export plan – but these will neither grab headlines nor dominate conversations. The additional NHS appointments pledge will only generate debate in terms of its delivery, and it will take a lot to impress a public so jaded by the performance of its health service.

The first minister may recently have referred to himself as ‘full-on John’, but this was a PfG better described as the work of ‘steady-on John’, the man who stepped in to extinguish the fires the SNP had set for itself in so many policy areas from local government and equalities to transport and health.

By prioritising the practicable, rather than unveiling more ambitious pledges, Sturgeon-style, Swinney means to go on as he has started.