I share the anxiety that this unprecedented peacetime crisis of the British state may pass without a firm conclusion. For this reason, I have campaigned for years for an early referendum. But I am also wary of a potentially sadistic dynamic between leadership and base.
Growth Commission
“The disappearance of the gradualists is also their final triumph. Aided by a frenzied media and political opposition, they have come to symbolise independence without the need to manifest any concrete support for the cause, or demonstrate any viable strategy.”
David Jamieson: The twilight and triumph of the SNP gradualists
The UK Government’s budget deficit for this year will reach 19 per cent of GDP for 2020/21, according to Chancellor Rishi Sunak. It’s worth reflecting on that figure in the context of the Scottish independence debate. For years, we have been told by opponents of independence that a prospective budget deficit in an independent Scotland […]
Doubling down on the Growth Commission is a huge mistake
“We will get there – but if you think the next six months are some kind of cakewalk, or that the six months after that are going to be a doddle, you need to think again.”
Robin McAlpine: For independence supporters, the next 12 months will not be a walk in the park
“The purpose of an experiment is to determine whether observations of the real world agree with or conflict with the predictions derived from a hypothesis. If they agree, confidence in the hypothesis increases; otherwise, it decreases.” It is time for the independence movement to get to grips with the scientific method. Something does not become […]
Robin Mcalpine: Sterlingisation is a terrible idea and a massive liability
“The truth is, in their heart most on the Scottish Liberal Democrat, Scottish Labour and Scottish Conservative benches hate the SNP because they ain’t the SNP. Independence aside, they love the party and would emulate it if they could.”
David Jamieson: Why we should worry about the stupidity of unionist arguments
“When 75 percent of the nation would vote for independence with ‘the right economic case’, when is the Scottish Government finally going to publish one?”
Ellen Höfer: The blank White Paper
Merry GERS-mas! No, Lionel Messi is not signing for Rangers. GERS day is the geek term for the ultimate geeky day in Scottish politics, where a statistical publication is wielded like a constitutional axe, weaponised as the definitive financial statement of whether an independent Scotland is perfectly viable or a disaster waiting to happen, depending […]
On GERS day 2020, we should remember that economics is about choices
“Problems like those posed by the GC do not go away on their own. They are either addressed directly and completely, or they go septic and rot, bleeding weakness across the whole body of the independence argument. The time to lance the rancid bubo has come.”
David Jamieson: The first establishment blows against Sterlingisation are landing, and cannot be ignored
“Perhaps the most damning thing I can say about this report is I couldn’t really find anything in it that would be out of place in any Scottish Enterprise Annual Review in the last 40 years. This is continuity Scotland.”