Well, there you have it. 

After Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget in September, we now know how much it’ll cost us all.  And it’s going to hurt. A lot.

Yesterday, the Chancellor was on his feet in the House of Commons delivering the Autumn Statement. 

It is now beyond doubt that we have now well and truly entered a new age of austerity. 

The bad news is, it’s you and I, ordinary Glaswegians, who will be paying for it - not the Tufton Street think tanks, whose Thatcherite economics crashed our economy and drove up mortgage prices.

After using family finances as some sort of economic experiment, we are now facing tens of billions of pounds of eye-watering cuts which, make no mistake about it, will slaughter frontline services and have an impact on household budgets for years to come. 

Now, don’t get me wrong - I accept that the war in Ukraine and the scarring of a global pandemic has had a major impact on our economy.  No-one denies that but the thing that sticks in the craw of most of us has been the self-inflicted wounds to the UK economy. 

That has included Brexit and the botched budget from a Prime Minister who lasted only seven weeks in office, the shortest serving Prime Minister in history. 

The worst thing is, it didn’t have to be this way. 

Tough decisions could have been made but the Tory Government in London has decided to balance the books on the backs of the poor, rather than those who can afford it more. 

Yesterday’s statement was a huge missed opportunity to put the UK economy back on a strong footing, whilst protecting the most vulnerable. 

The Chancellor should have made fairer choices - properly taxing non-doms, banks, share buybacks, and expanding the windfall tax to companies making excess profits - but instead the Tories have chosen to impose devastating cuts to family budgets and public services.

Life for hard-pressed Glaswegians could have been made a lot easier if the Chancellor had followed the lead of the SNP Scottish Government by matching progressive policies like the Scottish Child Payment - but instead he has cut household incomes by imposing stealth taxes on families.

Perhaps the most depressing thing is that both of Westminster’s two big parties are largely singing from the same economic hymn sheet.

The sad reality is that the Tories and the Labour Party are both in denial about the long-term damage they are causing with Brexit, which is reducing economic growth, lowering real wages, increasing costs, and harming public services.

Neither party can be trusted to fix the economy, when they both continue to impose the biggest factor damaging it.

As a result of yesterday’s Autumn Statement, my colleagues in the Scottish Government are now going to be left with no option but to impose budget reductions which all of us are going to feel.

And that is why I want to see things done differently when it comes to building a fairer economy which protects the lowest earners. 

For me, it’s simply not enough to just tinker with our limited income tax powers. 

We need radical reform and overhaul of our economy to ensure that those who earn most - and that includes MPs like me - pay more to resource our public services.

The indisputable reality is that you cannot have good well-funded public services without paying for it. But the budget we saw sees tax go up and public spending go down - all because we have eye-watering debt levels as a result of London’s Westminster’s mismanagement of the economy. 

If we learned one thing yesterday, it’s that Scotland literally and metaphorically can’t afford to have our economy run by a Tory Government in Westminster we did not vote for, indeed one we’ve not voted for since the 1950s. 

The only way to get Scotland's economy on the road to prosperity is to become an independent country and regain our place in Europe.

That is the best way to boost economic growth - and the only way to ensure Scotland never again gets Tory Governments we don't vote for, not to mention a Chancellor who laments at the Despatch Box about making tough financial decisions after spending £110 on having his hair cut.