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It's almost as if there's an election coming.

On budget morning, the SNP is close to a deal with councils that would protect police numbers and freeze council tax, while their opponents are eager to avoid being associated with the impact of the cuts kicking in with the new financial year, a month before election day.

It should be no surprise that the Scottish government wants to protect flagship policies, if only for one year. The health service is getting a softening of the blow, with polls showing that remains the public's choice.

What remains to be seen from today's budget is what they're not protecting. A £300m saving from freezing public sector pay for a year (for those earning above £21,000) only goes so far towards the scale of cuts required, particularly when some public services spending is shifted into the capital budget.

The less politically popular spending heads can expect to see the worst of the squeeze. Apart from police numbers, the justice budget could be one to take a big hit. It's looking particularly ugly for housing too.

Pay and conditions for teachers are going to come under pressure, starting with the budget for staffroom supply staff.

Growth and justice

And what about universities? They are often seen at the heart of any strategy to grow the economy, but the read across from Whitehall's distribution of resources could see them take a swingeing cut.

The difference in Scotland is that there's no plan in place to fill the gap in higher education funding that would be left by that.

That question of where to support economic growth and where to support social justice will be one of the balancing acts John Swinney has to perform with this budget. You can aim to achieve both, but there are trade-offs between them. Social care, for instance, doesn't do much for growth.

Giving only one year's budget avoids having to address that sort of question of longer-term public service reform, of universities and elsewhere.

The Scottish government's argument is that it can hardly be accused of shying away from the difficult choices when next financial year - which it has to address - is going to be by far the toughest of any over the four year spending period.

It also thinks that the election next May should set the direction of the following three years, so the choices should be at the ballot box.

Put another way, John Swinney doesn't want to show his hand any more than his opponents do.

Celtic tax takeaway

What he will want to do, however, is to argue that Scotland could be handling the financial crunch much better if it had more economic and fiscal powers.

The one that has featured most in recent years has been corporation tax. Cut that, and you bring in business, so that total business tax revenue goes up.

That argument has been based on what's happened in Ireland. But there's a bigger story developing in parallel today, about the price Ireland will have to pay for its financial nightmares.

One part of the price is that some other European countries want to force up its corporation tax which, at 12%, has been undercutting competing economies, and is less than half the UK's rate.

If that happens, that key to the Celtic tiger's boom years, and to the aspirations that a fiscally autonomous Scotland could follow, could soon be no more.