Yippee! The number-crunching boffins are at war again. The UK and Scottish governments have today released rival forecasts for life in an independent Scotland.
It will not surprise you that the UK government’s projections run towards the pessimistic side of the ledger while their opponents in Edinburgh take a sunnier view of Scotland’s future economic circumstances and performance. Fancy that!
The Scottish government suggests there might be £5bn windfall from independence; the UK government reckons each Scot receives a ‘Union dividend’ worth something like £1,400 a year.
They can’t both be right. In fact the probability is they are both wrong. That is, Scotland’s fiscal and economic position would be neither as bleak as London suggests nor as rosy as Edinburgh claims.
The truth is that no-one actually knows. Like all such forecasts, these rely on so many assumptions that they should only be treated as some of the many possible outcomes that might be possible.
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