Laurie Macfarlane

Big ideas are easy — funding them is the hard part.

On 5 March we’re bringing together a fantastic panel to explore how Scotland can actually pay for a just transition.

Register here 👇

EVENT: Funding Scotland's Future – Tax Reform for a Just Transition.

Join us for a timely discussion in the Scottish Parliament with a fantastic panel of speakers.

🗓️ 5 March, 17:30, Committee Room 3.

Register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/funding-sc...

Our Co-Director @lmacfarlane.bsky.social was among those asked by Holyrood Magazine to outline priorities for Scotland’s economy over the next 5 years 📈

New polling: Majority of Scots support council tax reform Five times as many Scots support Council Tax reform as oppose it.

New polling has confirmed what many already knew: council tax is deeply unfair, and replacing it is popular.

Read our new blog by David Avern:

New polling shows strong support for council tax reform.

Just 2% of people support the current regressive system.

Five times as many Scots back reform in the next Parliament as oppose it 👇

I highlighted this risk in my interview with @scotnational.bsky.social last year on the plans to issue Scottish bonds (‘kilts’):

www.thenational.scot/news/2566375...

The Scottish Government is handing £7m to bankers and lawyers to help them voluntarily borrow more expensively.

This gravy train was sadly predictable — and it will result in less investment, not more. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

GSR 2025 | Wind Power A comprehensive annual overview of the state of renewable energy.

* In 2024 (not last year). Source:

China built more wind power last year than the rest of the world combined — by a factor of two:

🇨🇳 79.8 GW
🌍 (excl. China) 37 GW

As the article points out, our leverage is greater if we act with Europe. But it’s still a one-sided battle, and Europe isn’t exactly united.

Britain + Europe urgently need a plan for decoupling and reindustrialisation. But I think it’s wise to avoid knee-jerk escalation.

In this sense, I sympathise with Starmer. There’s simply not much we can do in the short-term that doesn’t make things worse.

This is the brutal reality of realpolitik. In Britain we’re not used to being on the losing side, but here we are.

The big problem: in any tit-for-tat, the US has far more powerful weapons than we do, because we are in essence a vassal state.

They could crush us in every arena — economic, financial, technology and military. If it’s a race to the bottom we will lose, badly.

A fire-sale of treasuries would be the financial equivalent of setting off a nuke. And it would likely be met with a nuclear response.

Given how intertwined we are with the US, and the size of our finance sector, any turbulence in bond markets would have considerable blow back on us.

Finally, the big one: Treasury bonds.

The UK is now the third largest holder of treasuries, so in theory this should provide leverage. But weaponising this comes with a big risk of collateral damage.

On regulating big tech: this could be powerful symbolically, but it’s not huge economically.

And if we hit this hard, we can expect the US to punish our exports. This suffers from the same problem as tariffs: they can hurt us far more than we can hurt them.

On tariffs: the UK could retaliate, but the stakes are highly asymmetric:

🇬🇧 exports to 🇺🇸 = ~7% of our GDP.
🇺🇸 exports to 🇬🇧 = ~0.7% GDP.

America’s tariffs hit us far harder than ours would hit them. There’s only one winner in a trade war — and it’s not us.

Trump tariffs should push Britain towards realism The Thucydides Trap refers to the high probability of conflict when one global hegemon rises to eclipse a declining power. The world avoided that fate as the British Empire was replaced by Pax America...

Interesting piece arguing the UK has meaningful leverage over the US — tariffs, tech regulation, and treasuries.

It would be nice, but I’m not convinced any of these provide much real leverage 🧵

Britain couldn’t have picked a worse time to pursue its fantasy of becoming an “independent great power” once again.

This was never going to survive contact with reality. But ironically it’s the US — who Brexiteers wanted closer alignment with — that is teaching us this lesson.

Europe as a whole is different. It is both less reliant on the US and its scale means it has some cards it can play. As I put it in the above piece:

“While the EU lacks technological leadership but has considerable trade power, the UK has neither.”

Not only does Trump not care — he’ll happily weaponise every vulnerability to get exactly what he wants.

Tariffs, sanctions, withdrawing intelligence and nukes — nothing is off the table. And Britain has virtually no meaningful leverage it can apply in response.

I was bracing myself for a bumpy four years, but Trump 2.0 really has surpassed expectations.

Britain’s initial strategy for dealing with Trump’s belligerence was to roll out the red carpet. This has backfired in spectacular fashion.

Few countries are more exposed to Trump’s bullying than post-Brexit Britain. We’re utterly reliant on the US and lack any serious clout to retaliate with.

As I put it when Trump got re-elected: “the UK is a sitting duck”🧵

Trump is sending funds from Venezuela oil to a bank in Qatar: report Senior officials claim Gulf state provides neutral location to store proceeds from which they can be moved safely and without risk of seizure

Let me get this straight: Trump has stashed $500m raised from selling Venezuelan oil in a private offshore account in Qatar — the country that recently gifted Trump a $400m private jet?

Sounds legit 😬 www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Scotland’s Budget: Tough Choices Delayed, Not Avoided Our analysis of Scotland's Budget for 2026/27.

Read the full @futureeconscot.bsky.social budget analysis here:

The Scottish Budget increased the bottom two income tax thresholds by 7.4%, which was billed as a tax cut for low earners.

In reality this benefits higher earners the most — but is more than offset by freezing the higher thresholds.

Our analysis of this week’s Scottish Budget 👇

Some welcome measures, but tough choices have been delayed — not avoided.

Taxes will have to rise if Scotland is to maintain its social contract long-term.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Today's Budget contains some welcome changes on tax, however Scotland's underlying fiscal challenges remain.

Read our full response: www.futureeconomy.scot/press/249-re...

Some significant tax reforms in Scotland’s budget:

🏠 New mansion tax
✈️ Private jet tax
💰Tax cuts for low income tax bands

Full @futureeconscot.bsky.social analysis to follow soon. #ScottishBudget

Why SNP is going to have to put up income tax for most of us or make devastating cuts Don’t expect any big tax shocks in the Scottish Budget, but sooner or later, politicians are going to have to be honest about the government’s difficult fiscal position

"Sooner or later, Scotland’s politicians will need to have an honest conversation with the public. If the state is to sustain the services we all rely on, taxes will have to rise. If they don’t, devastating cuts are inevitable.”

Writes @lmacfarlane.bsky.social 👇

www.scotsman.com/news/opinion...

“If Scotland wants to maintain its proud social contract, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: most of us will need to pay a little more tax.”

My op-ed ahead of this week’s Budget for @scotsman.com: