Is Scottish independence worth the pain of becoming a hostile power?

It is GERS week in Scotland, when the official numbers on the public finances are published each year by the Scottish government’s statisticians. In an arcane ritual, politicians and campaigners study the figures for five minutes and then skirmish over what they mean for the Independence debate.

This year, even before the full impact of Covid-19 is felt on the public finances, they show that Scotland has a deficit (the gap between spending and revenue) of almost 9%, that is £2bn higher than the previous year. Next year’s Covid-sponsored public finances numbers promise to be a horror show, for the UK and Scotland. But Scotland’s numbers will be worse.

Scotland spends more, and is encouraged to by Whitehall, for all sorts of reasons. There is the sheer scale of land mass and there are remote communities with different needs. Plus, the Union is about pooling resources and the Scottish lobby has been successful for generations at Westminster.

On GERS (Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland) the BBC reported yesterday:

“Scotland spent £15.1bn more on public services than it raised in taxes last year, according to Scottish government statistics… The statistics also estimated that Scotland raised £308 less per person than the UK average in taxation, while public spending was £1,663 per person higher in Scotland.”

This is – let’s face it – pretty embarrassing for the SNP government in Edinburgh. Goodness, I think it’s pretty embarrassing, and I’m a Unionist. The land of Adam Smith made a fortune from enterprise (and running much of the empire, but don’t mention the empire) and now it has an evaporating private sector and is powered by UK public-spending and the warm feeling and hot air that is produced as a by-product of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s ever-expanding moral superiority complex.

The SNP answer is that after independence this – the deficit, the economic problem – will magically right itself because of a dramatic increase of sheer belief in Scotland. Investors will supposedly flock immediately to high-tax Scotland and growth will take off. Public spending will still grow, but the deficit will fall because public spending will increase by a bit less than wonderful growth. Scotland will then apply to rejoin the EU, while using the Pound, the rest of the UK’s currency, without a banking union but also maybe establishing its own currency in time and perhaps joining the Euro. Simultaneously, the SNP government will then get “English” weapons off Scottish soil and conduct an entirely good-natured discussion with London about the dismemberment of British institutions.

Dream on.

The main advantage that the SNP has is that anyone pointing out that their plan is largely deluded, over-optimistic hokum can be accused in populist-style of not believing sufficiently in Scotland. Criticism – or asking questions – is thus deemed unpatriotic and to be shut down.

As a Brexiteer, I’ve seen a version of this over-optimistic argument play out before, successfully (for Vote Leave) in 2016 on Brexit. Even those of us who described ourselves as moderate Brexiteers, who said that Brexit would involve some difficulty but on balance be worth it for self-government got swept up in having to pick a side and simplify the case in what became a bitter, binary argument.

Independence is very obviously much more challenging than Brexit. The UK was leaving a mere forty year construct – the EU in its current form – whereas the UK is a state that is centuries old with its own central bank, a long-established currency and pension-system, defence forces and transfer mechanisms via welfare and public spending more broadly. Breaking up Britain is feasible – of course – but it is quite mad to pretend it will be anything like straightforward.

I’m just back from several weeks in Scotland, observing the cult of Sturgeon that has (for now) captured more than half of all Scots. My main observation – apart from how Calvinist the SNP has become, and how good it is to climb a “munro” and gaze at the view from the summit – is that fashionable Scottish opinion swept away in the moment is once again, through hubris, at risk of failing to consider the English dimension.

The Union of 1707 was the attempted resolution of a deep problem in these islands. England had long worried, for centuries and with obvious cause, about the continental powers and their repeated use of Scotland to menace England. Scotland hated being invaded and would not be bossed about on religion.

The Union was, in essence, a deal, a trade off after centuries of combat and competition. Scotland would cease to become a threat or a problem and would join the political union – playing in time a disproportionately powerful role in governance and getting access to markets. It worked, for the most part, spectacularly well.

Those days are gone, say the Nationalists. Scotland can leave the old-fashioned UK and join the shiny new Union, the EU. And in the process all will, magically again, be well in terms of relations with Scotland’s largest market by far – England. 

Here, I suspect, the Nationalists are making an epic historical error and, once again, as has happened many times in Scottish history, misunderstanding Scotland’s big neighbour, England.

Back in the 1990s when the then SNP leader Alex Salmond was perceived in England as a jolly sort of quiz-show fellow – prone to say how much he liked England, and that Scotland would be a lovely neighbour post-independence if it ever happened – an assumption took hold in the SNP that the English would take independence kindly and smoothly.

Many an English voter would welcome the boost to English finances – see those GERS numbers again. But beyond that? For the most part, day to day, Scotland would be largely ignored, which is fine (though the Scots secretly hate that).

Parts of English progressive opinion – stranded with a permanent Tory government in England – would look longingly over the border to independent Edinburgh for a while, as it applied to join the EU.

In deep England, beyond North London and its outposts, my suspicion is that the view would be very different and far more sceptical. In Brexity England, Scotland would have opted to become a hostile power again, Frenchified in the EU but outside of NATO and Five Eyes (the intelligence alliance) because the SNP is not a fan of the defence of the West, and not to be trusted by much of England.

Scots will have to work out whether that exciting new status is worth the economic pain of transition.

This was originally sent out to Reaction subscribers on Wednesday August 26th. You can sign up to receive Iain Martin’s exclusive political newsletter by subscribing to Reaction – here.