PINSTRIPE
The noise over Brexit is currently enabling the Scottish Government to get away with blunder after blunder. A flagship children's hospital which may not open for years. Significant loss of taxpayers money at Bi-Fab , exposed by the laudably independent Audit Scotland rather than owned up to by any Government Minister . The economic disaster zone that is Prestwick Airport . The brand new screw-up that is nationalising Ferguson Marine which, as well as costing taxpayers a lot of money, will probably mean nobody in Government will have to resign for their part in causing the problem which brought the company down.
This all goes by in a blur as we watch the UK Parliament shake itself apart over Brexit. Hey, we may have stupid politicians up here but look at them down there ! - is the cry.
In political terms the current situation leads to strange outcomes. Nicola Sturgeon has to pretend she wants a second referendum on leaving the EU. Really? The Brexiteers who narrowly won a referendum by telling us loads of nonsense about how easy separating the UK from the EU would be have been exposed as, at best, naïve and stupid. The British public have woken up and might reverse the decision if there was a second referendum. Anyone seeing the parallels here?
Trying to extract Scotland from the UK without trashing our economy is not possible. Uncle Alex told us last time how easy it would be and luckily we did not believe him then. We should not believe Nicola now. If Scotland leaving the UK while the latter was in the EU was seriously daft in economic terms, it is downright lunatic if the rest of the UK is outside the EU.
SNP policy is for an independent Scotland to hang on to the pound sterling for a few years. Hang is the right word because we don’t have any banks anymore and even if we did we would not have a credible central bank to stand behind them. Step two of the SNP’s plan is that after a few years we would create our own currency - except that we couldn’t because its also SNP policy to re-join the EU and although we might be allowed in whilst clinging pathetically to the pound we would then have to transition to the euro. A separate Scottish currency cannot come into being if an independent Scotland joined the EU.
The even more devastating problem is the single market. The UK single market really works, same standards, same currency, no borders. What the SNP want to create is exactly the same problem now being faced in the island of Ireland because of Brexit.
The UK is leaving the EU customs union and single market. The British try to say this can be done without creating a hard border between the north and south of Ireland. It is the EU not the British who keep refusing to accept this. If Britain leaves the EU and a genuine border is created in Ireland just watch what happens to the southern Irish economy - it will suffer badly. The same would happen to a separate Scotland except much worse because the UK single market is absolutely critical for our prosperity - turning our back on that would be catastrophic for Scotland.
This will all become apparent if there is ever another independence referendum. Far from increasing the chances of Scotland leaving the UK, the departure of the UK from the EU makes it just so stupid for Scotland to leave the UK that I am confident the Scottish electorate - if actually forced to focus on the issue - will not vote to cut its own economic throat.
Pinstripe is a senior member of Scotland's financial services community.
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