Scottish spending review: Kate Forbes is contorting herself to avoid accountability on job cuts

This strategy of oppositional government is the cornerstone of any good nationalist politician, and the finance secretary certainly falls into that category when compared to some of her colleagues.

The SNP/Green Government, in particular, likes to talk about mitigation of UK Government spending choices and choosing to spend more on areas such as social security to compensate.

But it is also a choice of the Government to cut, in the thousands, civil service jobs.

It is an easy crutch for the finance secretary to lean on to blame the cuts in UK Government spending, but it is harder to point out exactly where those jobs will come from.

It is, after all, her decision on which parts of the public sector will lose their jobs.

The problem is this oppositional government approach often results in farce, such as when Ms Forbes said she refused to follow Westminster’s lead of setting “arbitrary targets” on the number of public sector job losses, only to then set an arbitrary target of “pre-pandemic levels”.

At a session of the finance committee on Tuesday, MSPs witnessed Ms Forbes contorting her answers to avoid giving certainty on where the axe may fall, all in the hope of avoiding accountability that would come with a firm number.

Blame for the cuts is much more easily apportioned to others if you are choosing to cut jobs in a “flexible” manner.

The closest we got to any inkling of where might suffer was when Ms Forbes confirmed health jobs would continue to grow, and admitted other areas would have to compensate.

But the failure to clearly define and clearly set out where and when job cuts should be made is an attempt to pre-emptively pass the buck.

It undermines future accountability, allows for definitions to take on a distinctly post-modern quality, and for ministers to slip away from difficult questions.

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