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Arithmetic for beginners

Posted on June 07, 2012 by

We would be lying if we said we were surprised by Johann Lamont’s line of attack at today’s First Minister’s Questions, but “dismayed, disappointed and depressed” would be a fair enough summary. With her finger as ever on the pulse of what really matters to the Scottish public, for some reason the Labour quasi-leader chose to repeat last week’s bewildering and incomprehensible assault about the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of England. (Possibly because it garnered her some rare good press from the Unionist section of the Scottish media.)

The situation is in fact a straightforward one, which Lamont and Labour are doing their best to complicate and obfuscate in furtherance of their own agenda. The Bank of England – which despite the name is the central bank of the United Kingdom – is an independent body, and has been since Gordon Brown surrendered Government control of it in 1997. While the Treasury retains certain emergency powers, in all normal circumstances the Bank’s activities in respect of the UK’s monetary policy are determined by the MPC, which has no Government representatives on it.

(A minority of the committee’s members – four out of nine – are appointed by the Treasury, but are all external, non-political advisers.)

The SNP’s policy is that an independent Scotland would negotiate as part of the independence process a Scottish voice on the MPC (presumably an appointee along the same lines as those of the Treasury), given that Scotland currently “owns” 8% of the BoE. At present there is nobody on the Committee specifically tasked with representing the interests of Scotland, which is an entirely unsurprising and unsinister state of affairs – as a UK body, the Bank’s responsibility is to the UK as a whole, and at such times as Scotland’s interests might conflict with those of the wider UK, the Bank’s duty is clearly, quite properly, to act in the interests of the majority at all times.

Johann Lamont, and the Unionist cause in general, has gleefully seized on an uncharacteristically sloppy choice of words by Nicola Sturgeon during BBC Scotland’s “Big Debate” last month, in which she presented Scotland’s future representation on the MPC as axiomatic rather than merely a goal. Scottish representation on the Committee would in fact be the realistic and reasonable outcome of any independence negotiations, given both Scotland’s part-ownership of the bank and the simple realpolitik of the economics that would arise from the dissolution of the Union, but it’s clearly not a done deal and Sturgeon was careless to present it as one.

Nevertheless, that does nothing to obscure the inherent disingenuousness and dishonesty of the point Lamont has spent two FMQ sessions clumsily attempting to make. The fact is that Scotland has no form of representation now on the MPC, and (more crucially) as we noted two paragraphs above, the MPC has no duty to consider the impact of its policies on Scotland specifically – indeed, if anything it has the opposite responsibility. So even in the worst-case scenario of failing to secure any representation, Scotland would be no worse off independent than it is now.

Equally crucially, and more pertinently to what passes for Lamont’s argument, the same thing applies to the Treasury. In all situations, the duty of the UK government is to the whole UK, not to any individual region of it. Regardless of the nationality of a Chancellor Of The Exchequer, if faced with a decision where the interests of Scotland and those of the wider UK were to be somehow mutually exclusive, it is ALWAYS that Chancellor’s duty to decide in favour of the UK.

Once again, there is nothing evil or wrong about this. For as long as Scotland chooses to remain inside the Union, its national interests will and must rightly be subordinate to, and subsumed within, those of the UK. Lamont’s insistence that Gordon Brown or Alistair Darling or any future Scottish-born UK Chancellor would ever abdicate their responsibilites and act against the interests of the UK simply because they happened to be born in Scotland is insulting both to the men in question and to the intelligence of the nation. (It also borders on racist, but we’ll let that slide for now.)

By definition, then, Scotland CANNOT possibly have less influence over its monetary or fiscal policy should it become independent than it does within the UK, because it currently has – and must have – none at all. It is, not for the first time, embarrassing to watch Lamont peddle this fatuous, mendacious drivel on behalf of the ever-shrinking proportion of the Scottish people who still vote Labour. They deserve better.

7 to “Arithmetic for beginners”

  1. Tris says:

    Lamont thought she had a hit on the first minister last week, for the first time ever. Indeed it certainly looked like it at the time.

    Analysis of the actuality not being her strong point, doubtless she will continue to raise the point on a weekly basis (given the deputy first minister’s unfortunate choice of words).

    I do hope Lamot reads your post and gets a slightly more mature and educated slant on the subject.

    Otherwise she is going to get very boring. OK, very more boring. 

    Reply
  2. R Louis says:

    The difficulty with Lamont, is that with issues such as banking and finance, I seriously doubt she really understands the subject.  

    She either believes what she is saying is very clever (without realising how daft she sounds) or she genuinely does not understand the subject.

    Either way, it is ineffective, as the average joe finds it tedious.  It also makes FMQ’s very easy for Salmond. 

    Reply
  3. John says:

    link to heraldscotland.com
    Bank of UK not England – Colin Donald
    “To seek to give the impression that institutions based in London are by definition unreliable when it comes to upholding the interests of all parts of the UK is not helpful to the Yes campaign’s bid to win credibility with business.”

    I think they are by definition unreliable, but that goes with being a main plank of the rotten to the core Union … However the theory that they should consider the Scottish economy rings true and therefore should not be dismissed .. no doubt it’ll be all over Question time later today.

    Reply
  4. molly says:

    Personally,perhaps the question she should be asked is why is there no representative from Scotland ,Wales and N Ireland  at the bank of the UK already ?

    Reply
  5. Tony Little says:

    The final answer by AS was the best rebuttal to the question about the MPC.  It is the FISCAL powers that are critical, and the power to manage ALL the revenue, and not play around with 8 – 18% (or whatever the figure will be after the Scotland Bill is enacted in 2016 – although with luck that bill will wither on the vine in Autumn 2014!)

    Reply
  6. Arbroath1320 says:

    If I were an advisor to wee Jimmie (thankfully I’m not! :D) I would be advising her to stay WELL clear of mentioning ANYTHING about the previous TWO incumbents of number 11.
     
    Let’s face it these guys did NOT do ANYTHING that put Scotland in a positive light. It all started with Gordy’s INSPIRED decision to sell off the U.K. gold reserve at ROCK BOTTOM prices and just continued on a downward spiral!
     
    link to youtube.com
     
    Just wondering how wee Jimmie will get on tonight, without the help of her faceless advisors. Will she be able to answer ANY question, or will we get a continual “Stronger together…….” response out of her?

    Reply
  7. Appleby says:

    It’s hard to know if Lamont is really ignorant of “Brown’s Bottom” and other flops by Labour or if she is trying really hard to avoid thinking about or mentioning it. Some brass neck to try and criticise others when there are such obvious faults in her own party that she never acknowledges or assures us are fixed somehow.

    Reply


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