Craig Hoy: “John Swinney was clearly ignoring the warnings from business leaders and economists that continually hiking taxes kills…”

John Swinney and his ministerial colleagues need to accept their approach is going to mean more pain for Scots in the coming years, through more tax rises or spending cuts or both.

Scots will rightly be furious that the SNP are shelling out record sums of taxpayers’ money on an army of spin doctors to try to defend their appalling record in government.

It’s indefensible that, while John Swinney imposes soaring taxes and cuts essential services to the bone, he and his Nationalist ministers refuse to cut their own cloth accordingly.

Their economic approach has the country stuck in a dangerous doom loop of ever-increasing taxes and low growth, which is resulting in far less tax revenue being collected than expected.