The SNP’s Finance Minister Kate Forbes has insisted Scotland needs around £500 million in Covid support from Westminster to combat Omicron. Sturgeon has been talking to Boris today begging for more English taxpayers’ cash. By coincidence, the call comes just a day after Scotland’s Auditor General, Stephen Boyle, said that Holyrood needed to be “more transparent” in how it spends public money, with the Scottish Government somehow underspending its budget by £580 million last year. Guido’s double-checked on a calculator, and that would definitely still leave an extra £80 million in pocket change…

Speaking yesterday, Boyle said:

“The Scottish Government now needs to be more proactive in showing where and how this money was spent, and show a clearer line from budgets to funding announcements to actual spending. This will support scrutiny and transparency of a matter of such significant public interest and importance.” 

Sturgeon herself has written a letter to Boris Johnson demanding a return of the furlough scheme, either centrally or as a devolved power, with Scotland “given access to the financial support needed to deploy these schemes.” The SNP does have a habit of having cash inexplicably disappear into thin air, so perhaps that £580 million just isn’t lying around anymore…