Scotsman Letter (2 days running) - UKIP in Referendum "Debate"

    I am gratified, not to say astonished, that the Scotsman have published a letter from me today. 2 days running is unprecedented.

Sir,

      Lesley Riddoch says Perspective (12th May) that "debates are being cancelled or abandoned because Better Together won't supply speakers". If so this is disgraceful. Also unnecessary.

 

     Better Together have always refused to work together with UKIP. However UKIP has not returned the disfavour and our current leader Arthur "Misty" Thackeray was the organiser of UKIP's campaign before his elevation. I am certain that he would make every attempt to produce a speaker where a debate is wanted.

 

     I personally regard open public debate of every political issue as a necessary and perhaps sufficient condition for democracy and assume the effective BBC ban on UKIP in the referendum debate means they do to.

 

     In 2012 I had the honour, along with our then leader Mike Scott-Hayward of debating in Glasgow City Chambers for No. Despite having only a few minutes preparation (the other parties had, at the last moment, found prior engagements)  we won easily. Partly by the expedient of mentioning a prior Green assertion that "nobody should vote Yes in the expectation of any economic growth in the next 10 years" which their partners had not disputed.

 

     The opposition were left complaining how unfair it was that they had to face us when had been expecting only the usual suspects.

 

     The exclusion of UKIP from the referendum "debate" has meant that a number of the clearest arguments against have gone unmade - those relating to the EU.

 

       Losing the opt-outs Britain has would mean losing our share of the rebate (nearly £1 bn); losing the opt outs from the social chapter would cost us 170,000 jobs; signing the Shengen agreement on immigration means border posts at Gretna; new members have to promise to someday join the euro. The SNP, uniquely among nominally separatist parties worldwide, deny us even a referendum on whether we want this union.

 

    Apart from the harm the Better Together campaign and the gatekeepers of the media have done to the No campaign, the Scottish people have, so far, been denied a genuine 2 sided debate on the issue. That can still change.

 

Neil Craig

Prospective UKIP Glasgow candidate

 

Ref - The Glasgow City Chambers debate http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/ukip-debate-independence-campaign-ukip.html

 

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    That is as good as I could ever have wanted. Not edited - check; party affiliation - check; dig at the other parties - check; pushing my own hobbyhorse of the importance of open debate - check; significant pressure to get us elbowing our way into the debate - check; bit of humour - check; getting to modestly imply I am a capable public speaker - check; getting to call the BBC totalitarian censors - check; putting forward a range of anti-separation and anti-EU arguments that have barely been mentioned - check; getting to use the word "censorship" in print to describe the censorship endemic to our politics - check.

SNP Take My Advice On Plan B - Still Not As Good As Keeping Union

    Interesting article on ThinkScotland about the SNP's decision that keeping the UK £ circulating in Scotland post independence is now the official Plan B.

    I am glad to see they are taking my advice. On the other hand Paul Krugman, a well known leftist economist and thus the sort governments like is quoted.

"Indeed, he warns, a ‘currency tag-along’ Scotland “would be in even worse shape than the Euro countries, because the Bank of England would be under no obligation to act as lender of last resort to Scottish banks — that is, it would arguably take even less responsibility for local financial stability than the pre-Draghi ECB. And it would fall very far short of the post-Draghi ECB, which has in effect taken on the role of lender of last resort to Euro zone governments, too.“

What would happen, he goes on to ask, if something goes wrong, if there’s a slump in Scotland’s economy?  “As part of the United Kingdom, Scotland would receive large de facto aid, just like a U.S. state (or Wales); if it were on its own, it would be on its own, like Portugal."

“Now, Scotland would presumably have high labour mobility — assuming it manages somehow to join the EU … it would be under the Single European Act, and it sort of shares a common language with England.'

“But that’s not necessarily a good thing: what we’re seeing in places like Portugal is large-scale emigration of young workers, leaving a diminished population to bear the fiscal burden of caring for the elderly."

    So even following my proposed Plan B is not, in the opinion of the SNP's favourite economist, as good as maintaining the union.

Bluff, Bluster and Bullying

   So Alex Salmond has described the decision that it would not be economically sensible of a separated UK to saddle itself as a guarantor of an SNP £.

    And he should know since bluff and bluster are his stock in trade and his enthusiasm for violence to suppress political debate by UKIP is well known, shows bullying is too.

    However the hysteria does seem to be getting near the surface as he keeps pounding the obviously ludicrous line that we can be in a £ club, and if Mr Baroso knows anything about it, the EU club too, which doesn't want us in.

    The sensible thing would be to change their line and say they now really do believe in separation from both £ & EU. The Scottish case for being out of the EU is even better than for the UK as a whole because Ted Heath deliberately sold our fishing industry down the river to get in and leaving would allow us to rebuild it.

     Sturgeon today, while sticking to the party line, did say that nobody could prevent us continuing to use the £ as some use the $. Clearly she has been reading this blog from a few days ago.

      But in bluffing and blustering Salmond today said that England will indeed want to share liability for the £ with us because otherwise it will cost English business £500 million a year in transaction costs.

      That is an admission that, if so, the same must be true for us (£100 per person per year). Probably considerably more because ours will be the less internationally traded currency. And presumably there are many other instances where moving out of the global network will cost us more which he has not yet blurted out on this fit of annoyance.

Osborne's 4 Conditions Are Economic Reality - England Will Not Elect A Government That Subsidies A Separated Scotland

Dealing with the First Minister's claims that Scotland can share sterling with the UK despite separation, Mr Osborne said that "people need to know that is not going to happen".

He outlined the four criteria that would be needed to make a currency union work, based on analysis published today by the Treasury, and said neither the Scottish or British public would accept the reality of such an arrangement.
 

The four necessary criteria were (1)banking union, (2)great fiscal risk sharing, (3)the same monetary policy and a (4)union that could prove its permanence.

   While this is being reported here as a vindictive threat that fact is that economically he is quite right. A common currency would mean England was liable if Scotland couldn't pay (technically Scotland too in the opposite circumstances but it would we couldn't pay.

    Those 4 conditions are perfectly reasonable, considering their liability, and it is unlikely that even if they offered such a union future English governments would get elected if they promised to maintain it.

   There is always the option that the SNP could publicly accept that these conditions are inevitable and seek to prove they could meet them.

   (1) would mean the Bank of England running Scots fiscal regulation - this is not a bad idea and Scotland's banks might well prefer this to being subject to SNP fashions. It would certainly help keep Scotland's reputation as a financial centre and for this industry reputation is everything.

  (2) How does Scotland prove we are taking on as much risk AND in a position to pay it. The only way I can think of would be by mortgaging North Sea Oil as a common property. Anybody think the SNP will do that.

  (3) That means virtually all financial policy would be subject to a Westminster veto. That all Scottish borrowing be subject to London agreement. This largely makes us more dependent than we are now since now we at least have the Scotland Act to say what we control.

     Indeed there is an extra problem. 18% of our gdp is oil - but its price goes up and down like a yo-yo and, because Scottish oil is relatively expensive to get out, the profit on it is even more variable. That means if the Scottish government is to spend consistently sometimes it will be borrowing extensively and sometimes it will be in large surplus (at least in theory because I'm not sure I trust any of them not to find something to blow the surplus on.

   (4) This is a tough one, at least for an SNP government. A few years ago they were going to sign Scotland up to the Euro - but that went down the tubes for reasons which make it obvious why currency unions take more than hope. Worse, and I am surprised nobody has made an issue of it, the SNP have already made noises about repudiating Scotland's share of the national debt. Worse, our future Chancellor, John Swinney, has said it. It is a general rule that Chancellors do not threaten defaults - it gives potential lenders a bad impression. Any Scottish government led by the SNP has already given away a lot of financial credibility simply by making that threat. And has give away much of the credibility of being committed to a long term currency union.

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Plans B

Nothing prevents the current UK money continuing to circulate in Scotland. As a number of countries use the US $. No London government could, or would want to prevent that. Holyrood could also print its own currency - making sure it is only a fairly small share of the currency in circulation. That would work - it would mean that our trade was still largely in UK £s so no extra transaction costs.

    So long as Holyrood was financially sensible they would be able to have a Scottish £ in circulation that matched the UK one.

   But then almost any financially sensible policy will work. It is only if Holyrood borrow more per head than the UK, print more and spend more and/or grow the economy more slowly that there will be any financial problem. But spending more while cutting taxes is exactly what they want independence to do. Well no, a financially destructive policy destroys - and will do so wherever the seat of government is.

   Independence does not make an SNP government independent of reality. In fact it makes us much more closely connected to reality, without a big neighbour to provide a cushion. With independence comes responsibility for our own future. The SNP's entire history has been of  blaming the English for everything and threatening to throw our toys out of the pram if they don't get more money from Westminster.

    That probably stops, one way or the other, with this referendum.