DESPITE the magnitude of the subject, the independence debate has been shrinking lately.
The Westminster Government and the Better Together campaign have sought to focus on a series of narrow issues – some important, some distinctly low order – as they try to paint independence as one hurdle after another. It has created a bubble in which Scotland's strengths and weaknesses relative to the United Kingdom are endlessly discussed, but from which the bigger picture is excluded.
The new paper by economist Margaret Cuthbert, which we report today, is a welcome addition to the debate precisely because it steps outside the bubble to consider the merits of the UK economy relative to others in Europe.
It is also welcome for being rooted in data, not driven by emotion or nationalist mythology, even if it comes to a nationalist conclusion.
The paper is part of the Jimmy Reid Foundation's Common Weal project, which seeks to diagnose Scotland's economic and social condition and propose solutions which can be administered under independence.
Cuthbert's paper falls under the diagnosis half – drawing on 30 years of figures to argue that, rather than the safe harbour described by Better Together, the UK economy is deeply dysfunctional, and the rot points to long-term decline and worsening inequality.
A central problem for Scotland is London.
As a world city, a global financial hub, and home to one in eight of the UK population, London's gravitational pull sucks in so much labour and capital it holds back the regional economies beyond the southeast, which are then unfairly labelled subsidy junkies.
It is hardly London's fault, but it is, Cuthbert argues, a fact now impossible to ignore, especially as London's sheer scale means economic and social policy are tailored to suit it, again at the expense of other parts of the UK, including Scotland.
In addition to the London issue, Cuthbert says long-term comparisons show the UK economy is competing badly with other EU nations, with industrial production virtually stagnant since 1990 as others have raced ahead.
Add in neo-liberal free market experiments, a top-heavy financial sector, wild disparities in regional GDP, falling wages, skill shortages, pathetic research and development spending, banks that don't lend, and crippling government debt, and the picture is of a broken economy that offers multiple reasons to spring for the exit.
Better Together's strategy is for Scots to cling to nurse for fear of finding something worse, but what if nurse is the problem?
The Cuthbert paper suggests Scotland will never enjoy a full recovery as part of a mismanaged, London-centric economy.
If it can, Better Together's job is now to say, with equal rigour, why nurse knows best.
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