John Swinney denies SNP holding up two-child benefit cap payment

Officially, the Scottish and UK governments are delighted at how well they are working together now that Labour has taken office at Westminster.

But on a party level, there is desperate manoeuvring between the two ahead of next year’s Holyrood election.

The SNP scored a significant blow with their announcement on the two-child cap, putting Labour on the back foot.

Anas Sarwar’s party attempted to put the pressure back on Scottish ministers by backing the plan – and saying it should be introduced even sooner, inside a matter of months.

The Scottish government immediately batted the ball back by insisting they are poised to deliver as quickly as possible, with the key issue being the data held by the Department of Work and Pensions.

Now the UK government say they would love to help in any way possible – they couldn’t be more supportive of their rivals’ key election pledge – but that Scottish ministers haven’t done the prep work yet.

The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle. There is undoubtedly policy work still to be done at Holyrood, with Scottish ministers still choosing from a number of options for how to go about offsetting the two-child cap.

But Mr Sarwar’s demand of the SNP is ultimately going to be contingent on the support provided by his own colleagues at Westminster.

So even as the two governments insist they are working on good terms, we can expect this political jockeying to continue until next year’s crucial election.