A MAJOR row over "tartan taxes" erupted last night as the Scottish National Party leader, Mr Alex Salmond, proposed the rejection of Chancellor Gordon Brown's one penny income tax cut, announced in Tuesday's Budget.
Addressing his party's conference in Aberdeen, Mr Salmond dismissed Mr Brown's "tax bribe" and proposed directing the savings - some £690 million over three years - into education, health and housing. This, he said, would reflect "the priorities of the Scottish people".
His bold gambit instantly redefined the Scottish political landscape, placing tax, spending and public services alongside the Union as key issues in the elections for the Scottish Parliament on May 6th.
But it was immediately branded "an error of arithmetic and an error of judgment" by Mr Brown, who said the SNP had shown itself to be "totally incompetent".
While the Liberal Democrats welcomed the proposal (insisting they had made it first) Mr Salmond's move came under fire from within his own ranks. Former party treasurer Mr Kenny Maskill said the leadership had fallen into "a unionist trap" and argued that reversing the proposed tax cut - effective from next April - would amount to "a double whammy" for people in poor rural areas who also had to cope with rising fuel costs.
And Margo Macdonald, the party's former MP for Govan and a high-profile critic of the leadership, said it was making a serious tactical mistake. "I think it is possible that it will provide an opening for our opponents," she said.
"They will be jumping up and down saying `independence means higher taxes'. It won't be true, but on the other hand they do have the full machinery of the state behind them."
However, Mr Salmond - who confirmed his party would not raise the basic tax rate above its current level of 23p during the first four-year term of the Scottish parliament - rejected suggestions that he was taking an electoral gamble, saying that in the 1992 general election Scots had backed Labour's policy of higher investment.
He noted that using the proposed tax-varying powers of the new parliament had been approved by 85 per cent of Scots in a recent poll.
The SNP's rank and file will vote on the issue today, and the leadership is confident it will carry the proposal. Certainly defeat would be a serious reversal for Mr Salmond, who yesterday told the conference: "Gordon Brown thinks Scotland can be bought for £2 a week. I believe he's wrong. I know he's wrong."
In Edinburgh yesterday Mr Brown said: "I spent a year working on a Budget; they [the SNP] spent a few days on proposals that don't work." He said the SNP was in danger of chasing business away because of its tax proposals and separation policy. If taxes were raised in Scotland the losers would be homeowners, pensioners, and young people. "They would be young Scots and older Scots who are working but are not wealthy, people who know that investment in health and education is already being carried out by this government."