The Scotland Office has published information today on Scotland's budgetary position within the UK over the past 30 years.
The press release from Mr Moore is headlined: 'Scottish Government must explain £41 billion oil deficit'. The claim is that over the past 30 years total spending in Scotland (including our share of 'UK services' like defence and foreign relations) has been £41 billion higher than total revenues, including oil and gas revenues.
An impressive piece of politics you might think? Proof that Scotland is 'too poor, too small etc' to be independent. But no, this is the Scotland Office, and it is an attack that has quickly fallen flat on its face.
If you look at the equivalent UK figures, the total UK deficit is £715.5 billion - and Scotland's population share of this is some £60 billion.
So, under current arrangements as part of the UK, over the past 30 years, Scotland has accumulated a share of the UK deficit equal to £60 billion.
As an independent country, we would have accumulated, according to the Scotland Office's own figures, a deficit of £41 billion. That is £19 billion less debt than we currently have as part of the UK.
Put it another way, the UK has burdened each and every Scot with additional debt equivalent to £3,800.
Mr Moore's latest boomerang attack is relevant to the independence debate in two ways. First, looking backwards. He has confirmed that Scotland would have been better off as an independent country: £19 billion better off.
And second, looking forward. Because he has told us just how much Scotland has actually contributed to the UK national debt over the last 30 years, we can now work out what our share of that debt will be, and it isn't the £60 billion from our population share. Instead, Mr Moore has helpfully lopped £19 billion off the figure that an independent Scotland will inherit. That means, on independence, Scotland will have lower national debt and lower annual debt repayments than if we remain part of the UK.
Once again, the Scotland Office shoots and scores a spectacular own goal. It must be the most costly press release ever issued. Although future Scots will thank Mr Moore, because he has single-handedly saved an independent Scotland a rather handy £19,000,000,000. So all I can add is, keep up the good work!
Well done. Pity none of the MSM will have the integrity to publish such a good analysis. Maybe Mr McWhirter in the Herald???
ReplyDeletehttp://news.stv.tv/politics/276035-snp-clashes-with-westminster-over-oil-revenue-claims/
ReplyDeletelooks like someone at STV might just follow this blog. Got say I noticed this on there election night coverage STV politics coverage puts the BBC's to shame.
Some of you have asked to see the full Scotland Office press release. I'll put up a link when one becomes available.
ReplyDeleteHi Stephen, surely the figures would have been even better than that because we almost certainly wouldn't be paying a 10% share of wars, nuclear devices and delivery systems?
ReplyDeleteIf Moore is going to look backwards to see what might have been then we can legitimately do the same.
Keep up the good work,
Robert
Personally, with all the whining a small percentage of Scottish people do, I would much rather Scotland becomes independent. At the moment it is like a younger brother that goes with your mother to a football game and sits 'booing' you.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this article btw.
ReplyDeleteBecause of it, we have been able to hammer the Unionist stance on other blogs.
Keep up the good work!
Scotland Office has now released their data
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/scotlandoffice/16142.html
I haven't had time to check their data in any detail yet, but the sudden huge deficit in 2009-10 £13.4bn or 32% of the entire deficit was notable.
This data is supposed to be taken from the GERS data, but the 2009-10 GERS actually shows the 2009-10 deficit as £9bn. The only place that "13.4" appears in the data is here
"In 2009-10, the estimated current budget balance for the public sector in Scotland was a deficit of £14.9 billion (13.4 per cent of GDP) excluding North Sea revenue".
The Scotland Office is even more incompetent than first appeared to be the case.
I'm not saying it doesn't make sense to discuss these sorts of figures but at the end of the day it's all wildly hypothetical. I mean, the cost to Scotland of bailing out the RBS was something like £45billion but then again it's not obvious that it would have grown so large and done so with such scant supervisory regulation if Scotland had been independent and thus 1) semi-isolated from the London banking sector, limiting the scope for merger growth somewhat and 2) able to establish its own regulatory agencies. Or perhaps it would have been worse, because without (1) Goodwin's involvement with the US mortgage market would have been even larger. Or maybe we'd all be living as alien slaves because unbeknownst to us little green men tried to invade in the 80s but were scared off by Thatcher's face?
ReplyDeleteYou see what I mean? Obviously the numbers sligtly more relevance because in the event Scotland becomes Independent a certain portion of the debt will be allocated to us, but ultimated the case both for and against Independence should be based on principles and not on fanciful counterfactual balance sheets.
Please read:
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100129401/scottish-labour-is-a-shambles-theres-no-way-its-ready-to-fight-the-snp-in-a-referendum-campaign/