Monteith and the Tory Party

Earlier this week I blogged, how, under the leadership of Annabel Goldie the Tories are now the only major party with a realistic cash plan for the Scottish Elections, according to Professor Midwinter.

Well I thought I'd just contrast that with how well the last cash plan shaped under Brian Monteith, who appears, to be as usual trying to put a spanner in the works. Under Mr Monteith's budget Professor Midwinter was scathing as he concluded

"The Conservatives’ budgetary arithmetic does not add up, with a shortfall in their planned savings of around £670 million.

"This DIY approach to public accounting is not good enough.

"The Conservatives need to master the basics of the financial system they aspire to manage. This is a poorly costed programme, which will be difficult to implement without further cuts in public spending, to compensate for the missing £856 million in the current calculations."

Contrast that with what Midwinter had to say about the current plan.

The Tories are the only party to give "modest, fully costed proposals", rather than making "fiscally irresponsible" assumptions. Despite being a vociferous critic of the fiscal policies of the Thatcher government, Prof Midwinter praises the party for setting realistic goals for efficiency savings and costing promises made on issues like crime and education.

He wrote: "This is quite simply the most transparent and realistic set of policy and financial proposals I have read in the lead-up to the current election and far superior to the creative accounting and rosy assumptions in the policy statements of the other major opposition party, the SNP."

So what is Monteith doing now.

According to Scottish Tory Boy, he is briefing, again, against his own party. Have a look here or here.

He also has tried to undermine the Tories at ContinuityIDS, both under his own name and a few others as required.

One wonders if he is not a tad upset about the fact that he got found out when he was cheating us on Taxi Fares after ratting on his leader as the Scotsman said at the time

"I doubt there will be anyone within the group shedding tears over this. We all knew Brian had an enormous taxi bill while he was attacking David over his taxi use and accounts, so perhaps he should have been a little more circumspect - but that's never been Brian's strong suit." - SOURCE WITHIN TORY PARTY

Scotsman.com News - Conservative Party - £850m 'black hole' in Tories' finance