AS THE Scottish Parliament returns from recess, the chickens are coming home to roost for John Swinney.

This week, the Scottish Government set out his Programme for Government and it made grim reading.

This is a Government that has run out of ideas and will surely soon be run out of office.

Finance Secretary Shona Robison has this week announced dramatic cuts to public services. Budgets for overstretched councils like East Lothian are likely to be slashed too – meaning higher council tax next year.

These cuts come in order to pay for the SNP’s decisions: including above-inflation public-sector pay settlements and free offers which are starting to look unsustainable.

At the same time as the SNP plans to take an estimated £600 million from public services, it continues to plough millions into an Independence Unit.

John Swinney says he was "brought down to earth" by the dire state of our finances when he became First Minister. However, he was the longest-serving Finance Secretary in Scottish Parliament history. Now he’s trying to blame Westminster for a mess he and his party created.

Scots pay more in tax but we don’t see the benefit, with the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment to pensioners being the latest example of how Labour and the SNP are letting people down.

The time has come for the SNP to drop independence from the agenda and stop wasting money on white papers and political propaganda crudely masked as public information campaigns.

The SNP were roundly beaten in the General Election and their plans for independence have been rightly ridiculed.

Yet again, we see first-hand that the SNP govern in their own interests, not in the Scottish national interest.

This is not just bad governance, it’s a betrayal of hard-working Scots who are paying more in tax as school standards slump and NHS waiting times soar.

The SNP needs to wake up, stop blaming others and put our essential services first.