NIGEL Farage’s suggestion that a key funding mechanism for Holyrood should be scrapped exposed his ignorance of Scottish politics, according to an expert.
The Reform UK leader sparked outrage when he suggested axing the Barnett Formula during a press conference in Aberdeen earlier this week.
Dr Neil McGarvey, a top politics lecturer at Strathclyde University, told The National that Farage’s comments suggested the Reform UK leader had not thought “deeply” about the constitutional question.
He said: “I don’t think Farage has thought it through very coherently, if I’m being honest.
“I would actually struggle to label Farage a Unionist; he’s not really thought in any way deeply about the Union and the implications of what he’s said for the Union.”
While the Barnett Formula is often taken to mean the whole process by which Holyrood is funded, it is only one part, explained McGarvey, with the baseline block grant making up the largest part.
The Barnett Formula, devised in the 1970s before the first Scottish devolution referendum, is used to calculate how much money Scotland gets as a proportion of UK spending in devolved areas.
McGarvey, who has written about right-wing politics in Scotland and the Union, said that he would describe Farage as holding a “One Britain philosophy”, which he defined as an “English-stroke-British nationalist approach to governance, that we should all be governed as one”.
The academic argued that because of The Vow – a last-ditch attempt to shore up No votes in the 2014 referendum, which included a pledge to keep the Barnett Formula while bringing in more powers – both sides in the referendum had cast their ballots for different kinds of constitutional change.
He said: “You could say, from an SNP perspective, if you reopen the whole debate about Barnett, you’re reopening the constitutional debate.”
And McGarvey argued that Farage may find unlikely bedfellows in the SNP over his comments about the Barnett Formula, which saw the Reform UK leader saying that Holyrood should be “able to raise a bit more of its own revenue”.
He said this put Farage in similar territory to those in the SNP who would argue for the Scottish Parliament to have “full fiscal autonomy”, which would see it given complete control over tax and public spending short of full independence.
Farage’s comments were met with outrage not only from pro-independence parties but from the Conservatives, who said his argument amounted to wanting to scrap what they call the “Union dividend”.
