Had the 2014 referendum resulted in a majority for Scottish independence, the first day of an independent Scotland was to have been 24 March 2016.
But last week, just a fortnight before the scheduled Independence Day, the SNP government’s annual “Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland” (GERS) report blew apart the economic claims peddled by the SNP during the referendum campaign.
In the financial year 2014-15 Scotland’s budget deficit was £15 billions. This amounted to just under 10% of Scottish GDP, compared with the overall UK deficit of just under 5% of GDP. Scotland’s deficit is the highest in Europe.
Revenue from North Sea oil and gas – which the SNP’s pro-independence White Paper had claimed would be £8 billions in the first year of an independent Scotland – was down from £11 billions in 2011-12 to £2.25 billions in 2014-15.
Scotland’s per capita deficit in 2014-15 was £2,800, compared with an overall UK figure of £1,400. And for the first time since records began, revenue generated per head of population in Scotland fell behind that of the UK.
The massive gap between revenue and expenditure was plugged by the Westminster block grant to Holyrood, based on the Barnett Formula – denounced by the SNP during the referendum campaign as a mechanism for subsidising England at Scotland’s expense.
And given that the collapse in the price of oil continued throughout 2015 and into early 2016, the figures for the current financial year are almost certain to be even worse.
The public spending cuts which a newly independent Scotland would have needed to impose to balance the books would have been four times greater than the cuts in local authority funding currently being imposed by the SNP Holyrood government.
There is nothing unusual about countries having (big) debts and running (big) deficits. But the significance of the GERS report was that it exposed the gap between the SNP’s referendum rhetoric and Scottish economic reality.
The report gave the lie to Alex Salmond’s referendum campaign promise that everyone would be £500 better off in an independent Scotland – and all the other now thoroughly discredited promises and blatant lies used by the SNP.
In responding to the attacks on its referendum promises unleashed by the publication of the GERS report, the SNP ran true to form.
They attacked critics for ‘talking Scotland down’. “Is it not typical that we have a Tory government that wants, just like its pals in the Labour Party, constantly to talk down Scotland’s prospects?” said SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon (who still peddles the ‘Red Tories’ line).
And they tried to put the blame for everything on Westminster and the Tories. The deficit had been created “on Westminster’s watch” and was “an indictment of the mismanagement by the UK of Scotland’s finances and our oil revenues in particular.”
But the 2013 White Paper on independence was not a creation of Westminster and the Tories. The White Paper and all its hollow promises and predictions were a product of the SNP alone.
Seeking to smother the bad news of the GERs report under a Saltire, they also promised the possibility of another referendum. A new campaign to “patiently and respectfully” convince voters of the case for independence will be launched by the SNP in the summer.
(In this context, “patiently and respectfully” means: impatiently waiting just eighteen months since the last referendum, refusing to respect its result, and refusing to respect SNP previous statements that referendum are a once-in-a-generation event).
But the SNP did not have everything its own way.
Challenged by Andrew Neill on “Sunday Politics” as to whether the SNP would plug the deficit of an independent Scotland by increasing tax by 16% or cutting spending by 14%, or by some combination of the two, Sturgeon responded:
“We would deal with the deficit in the same way that the UK is dealing with its deficit and dealt with the deficit in 2009/10.”
But in last year’s general election the SNP campaigned as the party which would challenge austerity. The small print of its manifesto showed that, in reality, this was not the case. Now the SNP had abandoned even the pretence of being anti-austerity.
And just in case any SNP members might be foolish enough to think that they could influence the policies of an SNP government, the Standing Orders and Agenda Committee report at last weekend’s SNP conference reminded them:
“While conference can of course mandate the party to take positions, it is not the role of conference to mandate or require the Scottish Government, which has been elected by the people of Scotland, to implement a manifesto, to take specific courses of action, or adopt specific positions.”
This follows on from last year’s conference, which loyally passed a motion banning SNP MPs and MSPs from making public criticisms of each other and from making public criticisms of SNP policy.
Pro-austerity and anti-democracy – that’s what ‘Scotland’s national party’ is all about.