It is my sombre duty to inform you that Scotland is talking about independence again. It probably seems like we never stopped. Your continued patience is appreciated. This time, it’s the economic case — or lack thereof — for going it alone. In May, the SNP’s Growth Commission produced its long-awaited (not long enough, perhaps) report into the finances of a separate Scotland. The gist? Scotland would be in for an extra decade of austerity but we’d be all right in the end by emulating the growth of similarly situated small nations. All in all, it sounded more plausible than the 2013 White Paper. They had to cut down a lot of magic money trees to print that.
Now, another report has come along and taken the tackety boots to the new draft. The research hails from These Islands, a sunlit uplands sort of think tank that would have been more fitting in the pooling-and-sharing, ‘Scotland, stay with us’ days before Brexit.
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