Bedfellows don't get much odder than Jim Sillars and John Redwood, but they share a mouth-frothing intemperance in their views on the rights of business leaders to speak out on major political issues like the Scottish independence and potential European Union referendums.
They are both also pretty handy with menaces. While Sillars famously threatened "a day of reckoning" for Scots business leaders if they continued to share their reservations over a Yes vote, Redwood was effectively threatening a boycott of businesses which spoke out in favour of Brussels. He said: "It will be deeply disruptive to their businesses, and maybe even to their own tenure of their jobs, if a chief executive with a handful of shares thinks he can put the voice of a multinational corporation behind a highly intense political argument in one country in which they operate."
It might be said in his defence that UK business was once determinedly pro-euro, a misjudgement for which no-one had ever publicly apologised.
The question of what the SNP stands for in terms of fiscal policy rather than "powers" has to be answered sooner or later. What, for example, does it think of the Conservative policy to raise the threshold of the higher rate tax band from £41,000 to £50,000, widely seen as an electoral sop to middle earners? Agenda put the question to SNP Treasury spokesman Stewart Hosie MP.
He said: "Coming just two days after George Osborne told millions of working people on low incomes that he was freezing tax credits, there are real questions about who is paying for the tax cuts. We welcome the increase in the tax threshold at the lower level but with £25 billion more austerity cuts promised the Chancellor's figures just don't add up."
Sharp-eyed readers will note that Hosie bodyswerves the litmus question on middle-class tax cuts, suggesting that the post-indyref SNP want to keep their options open.
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