Last night’s edition of Scotland Tonight saw a clearly nervous, rambling and seemingly well-refreshed ex-Labour spin doctor Simon Pia called upon to defend “Better Together” chairman Alistair Darling (“as good a frontman as I can imagine to save Britain”, said the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson in that extraordinary accent of his) from a series of attacks by his own side over his stewardship of the No campaign.
Pia played the usual cards that Labour types do when called upon to defend a man who is now distrusted by a majority of Labour voters. Darling was “substance not style”, a serious man with “cross-party appeal” (if you exclude Labour, the SNP and now seemingly a lot of Tories) who had “filleted” the White Paper (without reading it or understanding the one page he did look at) and saved the nation in 2008 “when we looked into the void”.
But not everyone shares Pia’s view of Darling’s integrity and competence.
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analysis, disturbing, scottish politics, uk politics
When it comes to oil and gas, Scots are used to being treated like backwoods yokels by Westminster, deemed incapable of looking after this valuable resource and lied to about its value. Oil and gas is a priceless treasure to the UK, and Westminster is terrified of losing control of it.
That’s because not only are the billions of pounds in oil and gas tax receipts valuable in and of themselves, but they also halve the balance of payments deficit, thereby protecting the value of the pound.
But how exactly does Scotland turn oil and gas into money?
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Tags: Scott Minto
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analysis, scottish politics, uk politics
From today’s Express:
The economy’s transformed! Everything’s fine again!
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media, uk politics
Today’s Sunday Herald has a rather low-key piece (it’s just the 7th-placed story in their “Referendum News” section) on the ramifications for a Yes vote of the 2015 UK general election. It comes the day after several papers carried vitriolic attacks from Unionist politicians on the SNP’s Angus Robertson for suggesting that the UK government ought to consider delaying the vote for a year to enable independence negotiations to be completed.
“This is yet another brazen stunt by the SNP to drive a wedge with Westminster”, raged the Scottish Conservatives’ Jackson Carlaw. “It is highly presumptuous of Angus Robertson, a man with clear delusions of grandeur, to be talking about postponing the next general election”, he continued, while Labour’s shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran bleated about an extra year of Tories.
But it’s rationally almost impossible to make any other argument.
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analysis, scottish politics, uk politics
If you don’t have time to read 170,000:
“Xmas dinner at the food bank”. The best of both worlds, there. Sleep well.
Category
culture, uk politics
So we’re pretty embarrassed that we’ve only just put these two things together. We’ve been spending a fair bit of time recently pointing out that there’s almost no chance of the Barnett Formula – in essence, a mechanism for returning to Scotland some of the excess money it sends to Westminster in the form of oil revenue and tax receipts – being retained after the next UK general election.
We’ve also spent a good six months highlighting that the possibility of Holyrood being given “more tax powers” after a No vote is actually a trap, not in reality offering more power at all, but more responsibility. (Because it does you no good to have to collect your own tax revenue – the power lies in deciding how your tax revenue is spent.)
And duh, it’s taken us till now to see the connection. Boy, is our face red.
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Tags: devo minusvote no get nothing
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analysis, reference, scottish politics, uk politics
That’s how often they tell us.
“The Barnett Formula, under which Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland receive more public spending per head than England, has long rankled south of the border. Even Joel Barnett, who was chief secretary to the Treasury when the system was introduced in the Seventies as a temporary measure, subsequently disowned it.
If the Scots vote to remain in the UK, as we hope they do, it cannot be as a result of a bribe from the English. A few years ago, the Calman Commission recommended scrapping Barnett, reducing income taxes in Scotland and then allowing Holyrood to levy its own rate on top, introducing an enhanced element of accountability and fiscal self-governance.
Such reforms should be openly debated ahead of the referendum: for the Scottish people are entitled to know that even if they vote to stay in the UK, the current method of financing public spending should not be allowed to continue.”
Our emphasis, from today’s “Telegraph View”.
The Barnett Formula is worth, by our sums, approximately £7bn a year to the Scottish economy. Bear it in mind when you’re being told about the “black hole” in Scotland’s finances after a Yes vote, because even if you vote No you can wave bye-bye to Barnett, and then Scotland really WILL be looking into a black hole.
We’re getting fair warning, folks. Pay heed.
Tags: qftvote no get nothing
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analysis, comment, uk politics
