We can't go on like this

Last Friday, I was invited on the radio to have a go at Kelvin MacKenzie who attacked Scotland’s welfare dependency on Question Time. I had to drop the bombshell: I broadly agreed with him. When I was political editor of The Scotsman, I was regularly amazed at the picture told by the reports I was reading. Masses of cash (much of it English) had deformed our once-great economy. We had gone from Silicon Glen to Mandarin Mountain and the “Scottish government” would be a lot more worried about our appalling levels of poverty-fuelling welfare dependency if they, not Whitehall, were picking up the bill.

In his column today, McKenzie says Scots know how to spend money but not earn it. This is utterly true of the Scottish government, whose sole skill is extorting money from Whitehall and justifying its outrageous budgets. As a patriot (Scottish and British), I have to argue that this can’t go on. And as a unionist, I back Alex Salmond’s call for “fiscal autonomy” – the system used in Spain where the Basque country’s budget is set at what it raises in tax. No one subsides anyone. And Scottish ministers would be forced to confront the cost of the welfare dependency – a system keeping thousands in state-sponsored squalor masquerading as compassion.

The Tories should embrace this Spanish financial system, because it will lead to a stronger union. The current system weakens the union by trying England’s patience and fuelling resentment: Kelvin speaks for millions. He says “Scots” I say “Scotland” – for the problem is not the people, but its government. And the government needs to start paying its own way. Anti-Scottish? Hardly. Being anti-Scottish is turning a blind eye to the dependency system which produces charts like the one below…

Male life expectancy at birth 2006: countries, and Scottish postcode areas.