Scotland the Broke
Published 27 November 2008
Uncertainty and anxiety are the presiding moods north of Hadrian’s Wall as much as anywhere else. Scotland the Brave has become Scotland the Broke, reports Rob Brown
Capital gain: a Saltire flies in Edinburgh
On an official visit to New York in October 2007, Scotland’s nationalist First Minister, Alex Salmond, merrily trumpeted how his former employer, the Royal Bank of Scotland, was a “global giant” and would play an important part in making his nation the economic success story of the next few years. “You’ve heard about Ireland’s Celtic tiger,” Salmond said breezily on the CNBC business channel. “What you’re about to see is the emergence of the Celtic lion of Scotland.”
Now there is no more talk about tigers or lions. Uncertainty and anxiety are the presiding moods north of Hadrian’s Wall as much as anywhere else. Scotland the Brave has become Scotland the Broke.
“The condition of the economy, the fears of our people, the state of the financial sector, are a staggering condemnation of the state of the United Kingdom,” Salmond told Scottish National Party delegates at their recent annual conference.
In truth, “Smart Alex” wasn’t smart enough to spot the reckless deficiencies in UK financial regulation before the crash. He never raised a peep about Gordon Brown’s long love affair with the pinstriped brigade; the former bank economist simply preferred the pinstripes of Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square to those of the Square Mile.
Every bit as much as Brown, Salmond was perfectly content to swoon over the bankers’ buccaneering so long as they were contributing substantially to the projected GNP of an independent Scotland. His proposed solution to the present crisis is similar to Brown’s: the state must spend and borrow, and the banks must be bullied back into pre-credit-crunch lending levels, so that we can all once again perform our great patriotic duty to shop and spend.
Salmond’s short-termism is driven by his dream of becoming prime minister of an independent Scotland by 2010. Ludicrous as it might seem, amid all the current turmoil, that is the target date the SNP leader has set, and says he is sticking to, for a referendum on the nation’s constitutional future.
After a full decade of devolution, and having slugged it out on the front line of Scottish politics since 1987, Salmond is in a hurry to make history. But party members should be wary of his impatience, because this inveterate gambler wouldn’t just be risking further economic instability and his own political legacy with an ill-timed referendum.
He would be risking the very future of the self-government cause. (Salmond himself has stated that defeat would kill aspirations to statehood stone dead for a generation.)
Though one survey has suggested that support for independence might surge from 31 per cent to 40 per cent if the Tories came back to power, that would still leave a substantial majority in favour of the status quo. Moreover, history has shown that the SNP languishes during economic downturns.
Ever since the discovery of North Sea oil first put fuel in its tartan-trimmed bandwagon in the 1960s, the SNP has transmitted a more narrowly materialistic outlook than most other nationalist movements. In part, this has been a response to the realisation that Scots have been seduced every bit as much as their English neighbours by money, status and possessions. Narcissism has been as rampant as nationalism in Scotland, as has nihilism.
Those who are serious about not just acquiring symbols of statehood, but summoning a new spirit of community and common purpose, a more healthy and wholesome set of national and individual values, ought to put off plans for a plebiscite and face up to these inconvenient truths.
“Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves,” wrote Ben Okri. “If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings.”
Truth is what will set the people of Scotland free, not worn-out rhetoric and an ill-timed referendum.
The writer is a member of the SNP
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