Scotland cannot afford to continue subsidising this failing, disinterested and dysfunctional Union.
Scotland cannot afford to continue subsidising this failing, disinterested and dysfunctional Union. The UK economy is in a fragile state and has not yet recovered from the 2007 financial crash, despite more than a decade of austerity and real terms cuts to public spending on essential services.
The evidence is clear. The UK Government has created a situation where Scotland’s finances show a false deficit, one that is not related to the economic performance of Scotland. Pro-Union politicians and the highly biased mainstream media point to that false deficit and say that it is proof that Scotland can’t afford independence.
This will continue until the SNP Government becomes more assertive, and gets better at explaining that what GERS actually proves, emphatically, is that Scotland’s economy is remarkably resilient and resistant to oil price fluctuations, that it is under-performing due to carrying the weight of generations of Westminster debt, economic incompetence and wrong-headed thinking on its back.