THE SNP’s botched approach to imposing a council tax freeze not only transfers wealth from the poorest to the wealthiest people but it also transfers wealth from Glasgow along the M8 to Edinburgh.

Over the last decade, Glasgow has already suffered the highest council budget cuts in Scotland, equivalent to half of the city’s entire education budget.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said the Scottish Government’s claim of providing a fully funded council tax freeze is misleading. Cosla has shown that local government’s core revenue is set to be slashed by £62.7 million while the capital budget is cut by £54.9m. The SNP and Greens are imposing a real terms budget cut that Glasgow just can’t take.

The council tax freeze is disguised as progressive, but it only really helps those with the biggest homes and does nothing to alleviate poverty. The poorest households in Glasgow already pay very little or no council tax, therefore, it is disingenuous of the leader of Glasgow City Council’s minority SNP administration to spin such a measure as an attempt to help those struggling to pay their bills in a cost-of-living crisis, especially when the direct consequence will be deeper cuts to council services and facilities that hit the poorest hardest.

To a Glaswegian, Glasgow is the centre of the universe, and we expect any leader of Glasgow City Council worth their salt to go to Edinburgh and bang the table to demand that central government pays up for Glasgow – to always put the needs of Glaswegians before any narrow party interest. Instead, we are being held hostage by a stooge who puts obedience to the SNP party machine before the interests of Glasgow and her people.

The nationalist government in Edinburgh frequently moralises about creating a “well-being economy” and its apparently progressive policies, but its actions in Glasgow are consistently regressive. The SNP have been in power since 2007, my entire adult life, and have never made good their promise to reform obsolete local government funding structures – and move away from the unfair council tax – to a more progressive form of taxation.

It is shocking how badly the SNP continue to let down Glaswegians – after a decade of decline, the city simply cannot cope with yet another round of cuts.

The urban regeneration company Clyde Gateway looked like it would be one of the few initiatives in Glasgow to escape the axe. Deputy First Minister Shona Robison allocated £5m of capital funding to it for decontamination of industrial land in the East End.

Clyde Gateway has been a true success story for Glasgow’s economy since it was established in 2007. It levers in private investment by unlocking long-derelict sites for industrial development. It has been a key driver of Glasgow’s economic growth that has paid dividends. It should surely be an obvious priority for capital funding.

However, in a display of breathtaking incompetence, the £5m of capital funding happened to be a printing error and so – in a humiliating U-turn – Robison was forced to admit to Parliament that no funding had been allocated to Clyde Gateway.

Similarly, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), the region’s transport body, saw its capital budget – used for transport improvements such as the ongoing Subway modernisation – cut to zero.

Clyde Gateway and SPT require confidence in state funding to plan complex, long-term investments and to attract industry to locate in the city.

The Scottish Government must now honour its original promise to Clyde Gateway by providing the £5m funding and it must rethink its outrageous plan to strand SPT with zero capital funding when last year it received £15m.

Glasgow deserves better than such stupid acts of economic sabotage.