Merryn Somerset-Webb

How to make money from the Scottish referendum

Whether it's Yes or No, there will be changes to taxes and land reform — so invest accordingly

The best time to buy an asset is when no one else can stomach it. Great fortunes are made in uncertainty. The self-made rich aren’t the ones who hung around on the edge of an iffy situation thinking about the possible disasters. They’re the ones who calculated the odds and bought before anyone else was sure of the answers.

So where is there uncertainty in the UK today? Most English people are utterly uninterested in the prospect of Scottish independence — or in Scotland generally. But if they were actually to look up north they’d see pretty serious turmoil. It is less than a year until every resident of Scotland gets to vote on whether they want to live with the devil they know or the devil they don’t. Will they stay part of our 307-year-old union, or vote to go it alone?

This surely makes a big difference to whether you invest in Scotland. After all, the SNP have made it clear that they don’t think much of the rich. There will be wealth taxes, land taxes and higher income taxes. There will be land reform too — politicians have made it clear that one way or another they will transfer power to tenant farmers and weaken the great estates that own swaths of rural Scotland. So you might think, at least until things are a little clearer, that you wouldn’t touch Scotland with a bargepole.

But here’s the thing. The uncertainty people think exists around independence mostly doesn’t. It’s a fair assumption that Scots won’t vote to go it alone (the Grangemouth debacle may have been the nail in the Yes campaign’s coffin) but all the things I mention above are almost inevitable whether they do or they don’t.

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