Following its now concluded annual conference, the SNP has voluntarily disqualified itself from issuing any allegations against the pro-Union campaign of the grounds of promoting ‘Project Fear’.
The Deputy First Minister laid it on the line in her address on Friday afternoon:
‘But do not ever let anyone pull the wool over your eyes about the consequences of a No vote.
‘They are clear and they are real.
‘Scotland’s social security system will be dismantled.
‘Scotland’s public services and universal benefits will be under threat.
‘Scotland’s budget will be cut.’
The message is nuclear: ‘Vote No – and take to the trenches and the bomb shelters at once’.
Both sides really need to stop this nonsense or public alienation from politics, already a serious issue, will increase.
Voters need to discard a great deal of what is being hurled around and concentrate on the core issues.
Westminster is not suddenly going to take crushing punitive action against Scotland for its impudence in considering independence.
Scotland may well have to wait to become a member of the EU [were it to be daft enough to keep aiming for that] and consequently to be a member of the eurozone, whether it likes it or not; and to be a member of NATO.
But if this country sought such memberships, it would certainly get them.
It is in the greater interests of both of these organisations that an independent Scotland should be a member; and they can be relied upon to put their own interests first.
The EU needs new members to help prop it up; and NATO would more powerfully need Scotland, with its shared land border with the UK, to be inside its tent than outside it, with or without nuclear weapons on its territory.
So don’t be fooled.
Equally, if Scotland wishes to use sterling and to be a member of a sterling zone, it is in everyone’s interests that this should be the case – but there will certainly be a price for it.
That price is the imperative of ceding control of monetary policy to the Bank of England, which makes ‘independence’ little different from where we are today.
No country could ever allow the stability of its currency to be put under threat by a newbie state with a shallow talent pool. After John Swinney comes – who exactly?
A common currency zone with monetary control in the hands of the Bank of England is exactly what we have at the moment.
We also already have – but the Scottish Government has chosen not to use them, additional powers over taxation as well as control over spending our budget allocations – which continues to be higher per capita than the rest of the UK enjoys.
And enhanced governmental borrowing powers are approved and in the pipeline. The Scottish Government will have access to increased capital spending powers of about £296 million in 2015/16 – and this can be spent on infrastructure.
Having argued for borrowing powers for some time, all that John Swinney could say about this when it was announced was that borrowing was all very well but we would have to pay for it. That’s what borrowing is about, of course and no state, large or small, should borrow if it cannot afford to pay for it.
Moreover, as the Scotland Office pointed out in June this year, the consequences of increased spending in England increases in turn the available capital spending in Scotland by over £400 million, taking it to to £3.3 billion.
This picture means that Scotland already has the currency, membership of the currency zone, its monetary policy under the external control of the Bank of England and much of the fiscal policy control of taxation and spending that the First Minister claims to see as superior to monetary policy anyway.
Where is the value of change in this, even if the balance of our national accounts would not face the challenges current commitments and revenue predictions indicate they would?
The constant addition of new costs
What we have seen in the past year – and it will accelerate – is offer after offer of more benefit, more easement – often without costs and almost always without showing how it can be paid for.
An incomplete sample of such promises is:
- We are to keep our hugely expensive universal benefits.
- The government is taking on £200M pa costs currently applied to the energy companies to try to keep down prices to consumers.
- There are to be uncosted increases in grants and loans to students in further, higher and post graduate education.
- There is an uncosted commitment to a pay rise for NHS Scotland staff.
- There is to be £60M of job creation schemes.
- There is the unquantified and very substantial cost of pensions to be matched to whatever is done in the UK – despite the fact that the Finance Secretary himself had earlier this year presented a leaked paper to his colleagues saying, even then, that he was concerned about the affordability of these to Scotland.
- There is an uncosted commitment to guaranteeing a higher minimum wage for all, to keep pace with inflation.
- There is the postal service to be taken into national ownership – an uncosted but very substantial initial and ongoing financial commitment.
- There is an uncosted commitment to taking Prestwick airport into public ownership and operated.
- There is a defence force of some kind to be established, developed and maintained.
- There is a foreign and diplomatic affairs operation to be established and maintained.
- There is a public commitment to £1 BN pa in foreign aid.
- There is substantial corporation tax relief agreed for the oil production companies to help with the costs of decommissioning and reinvestment in the North Sea – and this tax would be our key additional source of revenue, however erratic production can be in the control of the companies.
- The First Minister wants to cut corporation tax in general.
This is all about outgoings and, in the case of the last two, about voluntary reduction of income.
There has not yet been a single mention of increased revenues never mind of sustainable increased revenues – no indication as to how any and all of this can be paid for, initially and into the future.
Then there is Scotland’s share of the national debt – upwards of £140 BN – which we cannot in honour default on accepting and which for some years as a new state, will attract premium interest rates.
And there is the uncosted setup expense for independence, with an increased civil service, the full spectrum of administrative and management systems, equipment, running costs…
None of this is scaremongering, It is simply practical fact, openly described. All of it has been announced and is in the pubic domain.
Before any of the additional commitments listed above were made, many of them recently, the respected and independent Institute of Fiscal Studies found that Scotland’s public services spending is, at £7,932, 17% per head higher than England’s [Ed: our emphasis] – and would be unaffordable in an independent Scotland without either or both cutting spending or hiking taxes [Ed: our emphasis].
As the IFS said – and we must now add the new costs above – our commitments can only be met by borrowing or by raising taxes. There have been rumours for some time that tax hikes are planned – said mainly to be targeted on the middle class, the engine of any economy and who will emigrate – but whatever the plans, which must exist, they are being kept quiet.
The White Paper on Independence, due in five weeks on 26th November 2013, has no choice but to show where the money will come from to pay for our current and promised costs. If it cannot or does not do this, rhetoric, however stirring, is no substitute.
A Yes vote without such information would be wholly irresponsible, making every single person voting this way the potential ‘Plus One’ of the 50% + 1 that would take the nation into the unknown. The bravehearts would glory in this. Everyone else would pause for thought.