Wings Over Scotland

Some recent comments of mine about how the UK government and European Union wouldn’t – because they couldn’t – strip citizenship from anyone in the event of a Yes vote in the independence referendum brought dissenting responses on Twitter from a few folk who certainly know a thing or two about government.

Their primary arguments were so weak, though, that coming from such able individuals they exemplified how much the establishment is being forced to state obvious untruths in defence of an otherwise perfectly legitimate line of argument. But does politics really have to be this dishonest?

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Sometimes you have to wonder if the Scottish Wars of Independence are actually over. Throughout many long centuries, Scottish independence was seen by England not just as a threat, but as something that wasn’t actually legal.

Throughout the medieval period, the argument revolved around homage – which Scottish King had done homage to which English king, hence confirming the fact of feudal overlordship and thus the Scottish monarch’s subordinate position. When that was denied, violence was the usual result. And in his own only slightly more modern way, George Osborne this week declared the same war once more.

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Labour’s Michael Kelly on last night’s Newsnight Scotland, explaining that Scottish Labour MPs and MSPs would “to a person” back Ed Balls refusing a currency union, even if it damaged Scotland, because otherwise Labour might lose a UK election:

It’s nice to know clearly and unambiguously where Scotland stands as far as Scottish Labour’s concerned, isn’t it, readers? The only purpose of Scottish votes is to get Labour into power at Westminster, even if it means hurting Scotland to do it.

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In our public-funded role of monitoring the Scottish and UK media, readers, there is but one major frustration. Time and again we find ourselves figuratively – and occasionally really – screaming at newspapers or TV screens, unable to understand why we’re the only people who can actually hear what politicians are saying.

In a world full of seasoned political reporters, it seems inconceivable that we’d be the only people who understand their special language of evasion and obfuscation and code, yet over and over, journalists and broadcasters seem unable to pick up on comments that couldn’t be any clearer if they were written out in neon tubes, taped to a hammer and smashed into the interviewer’s face.

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The man the No campaign want to keep in charge of Scotland’s finances:

The term “angels’ share” comes from the ancient Scottish tradition of Whisky making and refers to the phenomenon of sealing up a volume of whisky in an oak barrel only to find less fluid in the sealed barrel when it’s re-opened. We can only assume that it was a mite confusing to people in the past to have sealed up a resource and find when they opened it back up that it was less than before.

Specifically, it’s the portion of a whisky’s volume that’s lost to evaporation during the ageing process, which is deemed to have been consumed by angels. But there’s a more modern version of the “angels’ share” at play in modern Scotland, and this one’s a celestial snaffling not of whisky, but of Scotland’s money.

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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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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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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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We always feel a bit bad when we point out in the interests of reality that Labour isn’t going to win the 2015 general election, because notwithstanding the fact that they’re only actually about 1% to the left of the Tories, 1% is still better than nothing.

And as we’re having a bit of an Ed Miliband day today, we thought we should do something constructive for the millionaire leader of the People’s Party for balance, so we’ve put together a nice picture gallery of Not Very Red Ed to show how at ease he is meeting members of the public, and how if he gets elected he’ll be closely in touch with the concerns of ordinary hard-working people.

Take comfort, readers. The Milibot 3000 is ++ ON YOUR SIDE ++.

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