I’ve heard it said that the two best days of your life are the day you buy a boat and the day you sell it. Owning a boat, in other words, is often more trouble than it’s worth.
Malcolm Offord likes boats so much he has bought six of them – a revelation which, when the Scottish Reform leader said so during a leader’s debate this week, caused a general gasp in the room and has since led to a degree of trouble for the man. Also, he said, I have six houses and five cars. Light up the eyes of his opponents that light up with pleasure.
Offord, as the above illustrates, is a very rich man. He reckons he has paid around £45m in tax over his long career in private equity. Not quite on the level of JK Rowling or Paul McCartney, but a bit more than me or, I’d bet, you. All this, in a modern Scotland deeply suspicious of wealth, is being held against him. Offord, who was sparring with Ross Greer, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, asked, fittingly, whether Scotland should have more or fewer people in his luxury position. “Less,” was Greer’s predictable response.
Here I find myself, perhaps dangerously, taking aim at an old quote from Peter Mandelson: “We are very relaxed when people get filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes.” I’ve never seen much wrong with that sentiment, and I still don’t – after all, the more taxes people pay, the better our public services are funded. It’s up to the people to make money in whatever way they choose, and the politicians to decide how much of it belongs to the state.
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There has been a great deal of discussion about Offord’s wealth during this Holyrood campaign. He has been asked to release his tax records and has refused. Until this week, he had tried to avoid many details about his financial worth. Maybe it’s because it’s so much bigger than most other Scots and he’s leading a party that claims to be standing up for ordinary people during a cost-of-living crisis – there might be a disconnect there. Perhaps, however, he knew what the response would be from the other parties and did not want to open up that territory to them. Of course, John Swinney accused Offord of “boasting” about his wealth, which I don’t think he was doing. Swinney, as well as a number of his fellow leaders, stated that he owned a house, a car and no boat. An easy – though perhaps cheap – victory.
The point Offord was trying to make, and has made several times now, was that he had grown up in a flat in Greenock, experienced being poor as a student, taken an overdraft and set off for London in pursuit of his fortune and made it. Therefore, he is free to enjoy the fruits of his labor in any way he sees fit. Ambition and success should not be viewed negatively. The fact that Offord is choosing to run for Holyrood despite his wealth tells us something about his character.
All of us who have had successful careers at one level or another will have our own version of the “six ships”. I have a lot of guitars, for example. I’ve indulged myself because guitars are my favorite thing and – almost – I’ve been able to afford them at various times. I try to take care that Offord wants a lot of boats. I’m not sure what business mine is.
But as I say, Scotland has a wealth problem. Its politicians certainly do. The last decade, in particular, has seen an SNP administration that has kept its nose in business. The party has always honored public sector workers over those in the private sector, and which has seen the phrase “wealth creation” as something to be laughed at, as something equivalent to “greed”. Scotland and the Scots are more egalitarian than their neighbors to the south east of England, we are told. We will gladly pay higher taxes; we will embrace a larger, more intrusive state; we will spend more on welfare and benefits.
Politics has followed politics. There was no success. Economic growth is minimal, while economic ambition has been limited. We have a problem to encourage business start-up. High business rates are forcing companies to stay on the wall. The tax base is very small. We don’t have many ultra-rich people who will pay £45m in tax over their careers. I disagree with Ross Greer: we need more Malcolm Offords. And we need more MSPs who understand business and are economically educated rather than following university politics.
I don’t hold a candle to Reform or Offord, but as former SNP MP Joanna Cherry said recently, electing a tranche of MSPs from the insurgent party “could give Holyrood a much-needed kick in the rear”. This is a sentiment I hear regularly from people who would never vote for reform but are tired of the complacency of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government and their failure to turn the numbers on the many challenges facing our nation. In short, let them have a bunch of toers and I hope they cause enough problems on the economic front to change the terms of the debate. That is why it is entirely possible that Reform will come second when Scotland goes to the polls next Thursday and Offord, with all his boats, will be launched as leader of the official opposition.
(Further reading: The Scottish election is turning into a farce)
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