All sorts of potential moves have been floated in the media, with inheritance tax among the topics in focus last week.

UK economic challenges have fuelled speculation that Labour will have to raise taxes and/or rein in spending to meet its fiscal rules, which are not that different from the strictures of the Tories.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research declared earlier this month: “The Government is not on track to meet its ‘stability rule’, with our forecast suggesting a current deficit of £41.2 billion in the fiscal year 2029-30.”

It remains somewhat baffling that Labour, given its lead in the polls ahead of the summer 2024 general election, felt it had to tie its hands so tightly with such fiscal rules. Surely the case could have been made for loosening the purse strings, to a sensible degree, and attempting to boost growth and thereby provide a fillip to tax revenues.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves, writing in The Guardian last week, described the talk about tax increases as “speculation”.

She talked about the Labour Government’s aim of boosting the productive capacity of the economy by allocating investment for infrastructure projects and reforming planning rules.

Ms Reeves declared: “If renewal is our mission and productivity is our challenge, then investment and reform are our tools.”

It seems that “productivity” is the buzzword of the moment.

You hear it all over the corporate world, in myriad sectors, and on occasions it seems management of companies are trying to drive their measure of “productivity” in ways which are counter-productive and lose sight of the bigger picture.

At least the talk of infrastructure investment makes sense in the context of productivity.

That said, when it comes to productivity, Labour might want to think about doing something meaningful to stop the Brexit damage if it wants to deliver a meaningful boost here.

Sadly, its red lines of refusing to take the UK back into the European Union or single market mean that Ms Reeves and her Labour colleagues cannot take advantage of the huge economic benefits a return to the bloc would bring. Such a return would certainly ease the pressure on the public finances.

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Office for Budget Responsibility chairman Richard Hughes said in spring 2023 of Brexit’s effect: “We think that in the long run it reduces our overall output by around 4% compared with had we remained in the EU.”

Labour, however, continues to turn its back on the big win, for fear it seems of upsetting pro-Brexit types who polls show are diminishing in number.

This becomes ever more frustrating as the UK economic misery continues, with no sign of anything that is going to provide a significant boost to growth or living standards.

There was mixed news on the economy north of the Border last week in a closely watched survey.

Scotland’s private sector economy slipped back into reverse in July but was relatively resilient on the employment front in a UK context, according to the latest growth tracker survey from Royal Bank of Scotland.

The survey showed a fall in the overall output of private sector services and manufacturing after two consecutive months of growth.

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Scotland was placed 11th out of the 12 UK nations and regions in July in terms of the month on month change in its business activity. Seven English regions achieved rises in business activity, with London posting the strongest increase. The other five nations and regions covered by the survey saw declines.

Scotland was second out of the 12 UK nations and regions in the employment league table behind Northern Ireland, which was the only one to see an overall rise in private sector staffing. The decline in employment in Scotland was slight compared with the falls recorded in the other 10 nations and regions of the UK to post drops in staffing.

Meanwhile, the survey showed the first increase in outstanding business in Scotland for more than a year, something which was viewed by Royal Bank as a positive sign in terms of the employment outlook.

Drops in outstanding business occurred in the other 11 nations and regions, which the bank declared was a “sign of underutilised capacity” across the rest of the UK.

Nicola Sturgeon was firmly in focus last week in the wake of publication of her memoir, Frankly. There was much in the way of negativity about the former first minister in the reaction to the book, fuelled in large part by politicking and emotion it seemed.

My column in The Herald on Friday observed: “Perhaps the best overall assessment of Ms Sturgeon’s time in charge is to be gleaned from examining the foreign direct investment numbers over the period in which she was first minister.”

Ms Sturgeon was first minister from November 2014 to March 2023.

The column noted that accountancy firm EY, publishing figures for 2024 earlier in the summer, highlighted the fact that Scotland has been second only to London in terms of the number of FDI projects won in every year since 2015.

The column concluded: “Those who would claim that Ms Sturgeon achieved nothing, or was somehow detrimental to business and the economy, should reflect on this, once the emotion subsides a bit.”