Wings Over Scotland

It’s been hard to miss the constant shrieking from Unionists in recent days (and indeed, weeks and months) about the consequences of an independent Scotland telling the rUK where to shove its debt in the event of a non-cooperative approach to negotiations. The words “renege” and “default” are repeated constantly, sometimes dozens of times in a single interview, alongside dire warnings that international markets would regard Scotland as some sort of pariah state.

This is of course utter bumguts – to use the proper financial jargon – on about half a dozen levels. An independent Scotland would in such circumstances have no debt, a budget surplus (because our current deficit is entirely down to UK debt repayments – without those Scotland would be in the black BEFORE it even factored in savings from different policy choices, like the £800m a year on defence), and a vast reserve of tangible resources, most notably oil, as security.

The rUK, by comparison, would have a debt of £1,500,000,000,000 and a huge budget deficit. If you were going to lend someone money, would you choose the guy living within his means with plenty of assets, or the guy who already owes his entire annual salary and is still spending more than he earns?

Nevertheless, we were still intrigued to see the comments of Sir Nicholas Macpherson, Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury, in his published advice to the Chancellor today, because we like it when people who aren’t on our side agree with us.

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The most significant message of George Osborne’s much-trailed speech in Edinburgh today wasn’t actually in the speech at all. The text itself was drivel, founded largely on arguments discredited literally years ago – chiefly that an independent Scotland would have to bear all the costs were one of its banks to go bust again.

(Yes, the same banks we’re told would in fact have relocated to England. Sigh.)

When he finally got down to the brass tacks, even his actual threat – that he would be “unable to recommend” a currency union in the event of Scottish independence, and that therefore “it is not going to happen” – was essentially completely meaningless. It was nothing more than politicking, a threat which could and would be easily reversed in the event of an actual Yes vote.

The real menace behind the speech lay elsewhere.

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It would do our blood pressure no good at all to analyse in detail the extraordinary parade of dishonesty and naked bias that made up last night’s edition of Newsnight Scotland (RIP pending). Instead, we’ll just show you these two super-short clips of one of the show’s “expert” guest analysts, former Labour spin doctor John McTernan.

Here he is last night:

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We dropped our contact at Ladbrokes an innocent line last night enquiring why we could no longer find the bet they were offering just a fortnight ago with odds of 50/1 on an independent Scotland NOT using Sterling. Hey, it was worth a try.

They emailed back saying that the bet had been suspended due to the BBC/Guardian news story, but later this morning it resurfaced with new odds.

Click to enlarge if you can’t make it out. That’s curious, isn’t it?

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The Guardian, 27 January 2014:

“Yes Scotland sheds more senior staff as funding doubts reemerge.

The five executive directors hired to run the official independence campaign have all now gone, adding to questions about its direction and spending power”

The Herald, 26 January 2014:

“Yes Scotland last night denied it was in meltdown after losing the last two members of its self-styled “top team” of directors. The pro-Union Better Together movement claimed Yes Scotland was ‘in crisis’. The changes come amid persistent rumours – always denied – that Yes Scotland is suffering from financial problems.”

Sounds like Yes Scotland is pretty strapped for cash, right?

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We’re still trying to get our heads around the most recent developments (that haven’t actually developed yet) in the independence debate. For a No campaign that’s been based almost entirely – and at least partly effectively – on endless scaremongering about “uncertainty”, the defenders of the Union suddenly seem to be going out of their way to sweep it aside.

Ever since the UK government’s announcement that it would be responsible for all UK debt, it’s been clear that Westminster simply couldn’t continue to resist the pressure from business to put an end to at least some of the doubt that the government itself had created. But we’re still bemused about the timing of the apparent intervention George Osborne will apparently make tomorrow.

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Good grief. We take our eyes off the ball for a couple of hours to watch a creepy movie (warning: spoilers) on a quiet Tuesday night and everything goes bananas. We’re hearing some stunned reactions to some programme the BBC put out, but we’ll have to wait to catch up on that one – the big story, for some reason coming out in the middle of the night, is that all the UK parties are going to finally definitively rule out a currency union between the rUK and an independent Scotland.

We’ll believe that one when it actually happens, readers. Because if they do, we can only assume that they’ve all got some sort of referendum death wish. Either that, or our side’s got a secret assassin in the heart of the No campaign.

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Anas Sarwar in the Sunday Post, 9 February 2014:

“Labour won’t look to switch powers over inheritance or corporation tax.

We do not want a race to the bottom on corporation tax where big business benefits and the workers on the shopfloor don’t. That might be nationalist politics, Conservative politics, not ours.”

Oh, Anas. Cutting corporation tax isn’t Labour politics? Are you sure about that?

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As we always say, we don’t set a lot of store by polls at this stage. We didn’t get all overexcited by the ones showing big jumps towards independence in the last couple of weeks, and nor are we downcast by the newest Panelbase showing a small drop.

But there WAS something interesting and potentially significant about it.

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We’ve speculated on a few occasions recently on the effect on Scottish public opinion of almost the entire Scottish media being owned and controlled from outside Scotland. So we thought it was time we actually put some facts and figures to it.

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There’s a pretty in-depth YouGov poll out this morning on the subject of attitudes towards immigration in the UK and Scotland. Some of the results are a little dismaying, others less so, but the media reaction has been predictably superficial.

“Scots want immigration cut and more control”, yells the Scotsman, while the Express goes with “Scots demand curb in migrant numbers” and the Daily Mail unsurprisingly goes for the most extreme xenophobic and anti-SNP interpretation possible:

Only the Herald finds a positive angle, with “Scots more liberal about immigration impact than rest of UK”. But those last two headlines aren’t merely an example of how the same polling data can be spun and twisted to give diametrically opposite impressions. A closer look at the figures shows us how sometimes poll results just don’t make a whole heap of sense in the first place.

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The top five most-read stories on Wings Over Scotland in the last seven days.

1. Unleashing a firestorm
The Financial Times breaks ranks and tells the truth.

2. Ask and ye shall receive
Actual lovebombs from the rest of the UK.

3. Father knows best
Lesley Riddoch puts David Aaronovitch in his place.

4. The ultimate weapon
John Barrowman Of The Week.

5. A mixed day for Johann Lamont
Probably the best she can hope for from now on.

The top two of those are also our all-time #3 and #4 most-read posts, in what’s been a record-shattering start to February. As we write this we’re well over 800,000 pageviews for the week, with five hours to go, compared to the previous best of 618,499. And as for the number of unique visitors, well, we’re not even going to talk about that yet.