An independent Scotland would fail financially, according to Scottish economists and legal firms.
John Bingham, head of real estate at Glasgow-based legal firm Bellwether Green, warns: “Independence is not financially viable. It just doesn’t work. The ultimate message is that the numbers tell the story.”
With a Scottish election less than six months away in May 2016 and few predicting anything other than an SNP landslide, independence is once more on the table, unless a Corbyn-catalysed Labour Party makes an eleventh-hour comeback.
Earlier this year respected economist Professor Brian Ashcroft, now retired as director of the Fraser of Allander Institute, an independent Scottish regional economic research unit, rounded on the Scottish government for publishing the results of economic modelling that produced “political-economy outcomes that are fanciful and are lacking in economic rigour”.
Picking through the latest official economic data, which relates to 2013- 2014, in March, Ashcroft observed that Scotland’s deficit was higher than that of the UK, meaning that if Scotland had been independent in that year it would have needed to find an additional £3.8bn of funding – a considerable amount that is equivalent to half the cost of the country’s education and training budget, for example.
Importantly, Ashcroft showed that historically Scotland’s deficit has been greater most years since 1998.
“What that means,” he said, “is that in 12 of the 16 years, if Scotland had ‘enjoyed’ full fiscal autonomy it would have had to have higher taxes, lower public spending or both, than the UK.”
Ashcroft also pointed out that North Sea oil and gas revenues were on a declining timeline and in the meantime were very unpredictable, calling into question how much they would actually contribute to the economy of an independent Scotland.
