Nothing To See Here. Please disperse.

Leaving the UK means cutting upwards of £9 billion from public services, welfare and pensions in Scotland.

I’m not asking you to believe me on this. Nicola Sturgeon makes it clear this is the case through her own words.

The SNP’s reaction to this simple, stark economic fact reveals a fundamental truth about nationalism.

This article is borne out of bewilderment at how Yes campaigners from 2014, who claimed to be utilitarian nationalists, have so easily ignored the ruinous turn in Scotland’s public finances since then. That so few place so little value on the fact that so many billions of pounds are redistributed to Scotland from the rest of the UK, suggests that utilitarian nationalism has been completely replaced by the existential variety.

As has also happened with currency and trade with the UK, arguments that were made so noisily in 2014, about how independence was the opportunity to break from austerity, have been quietly abandoned.

Surely some of those who joined a crusade against cuts in 2014 must be questioning why they now seek deeper cuts than Osborne ever dreamt of making in Scotland? Surely they must?

In 2014 the Yes campaign promised that Scots would be financially better off by leaving the Union. Cash figures screamed out from the front of their newspapers and leaflets. On the inside pages, graphs offered further reassurance of the public largesse to come if we left the UK. Infographics overwhelmed with statistics giving the impression of a campaign sure of its facts.

The basis for all of this campaign material were the SNP Government’s own annual public accounts statistics, known as GERS (Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland).

It wasn’t just the campaign leaflets. GERS was the foundation for every part of the independence argument marshalled by Nicola Sturgeon. The key documents of the SNP’s independence case: The National Conversation; Scotland’s Future, Outlook for Scotland’s Finances; Higher Education in an Independent Scotland; Scotland’s Balance Sheet; The Economic Case for Independence; Pensions in an Independent Scotland; and the Independence White Paper; all claimed credibility because they were based on GERS figures.

Today, when nationalists talk about the fiscal situation of an independent Scotland, they are far less braggadocious. A less confident new language has crept into their script. They no longer offer specific numbers but vaguely refer to “challenges” and the need for a “transition”. Scotland should be suspicious of those who once spoke of economics but now speak in euphemisms.

A whole political movement, that once put all its energy into directing us towards our national accounts, now desperately try to make us look the other way. The response to GERS illustrated below isn’t a clever political strategy, and it certainly isn’t a responsible plan for government; it’s a clueless farce worthy of Frank Drebin.

Every leading nationalist is at it.

Let’s start with Alex Salmond, as First Minister he couldn’t have been clearer that GERS figures showed “an independent Scotland would be richer than we are now.” He told us again and again, with typical rodomontade, that GERS showed an independent Scotland would have better public finances. Today he says “GERS tells you a bit about the finances of a devolved Scotland but doesn’t actually tell you about the finances of an independent Scotland.”

At a press conference after he signed the Edinburgh Agreement, Alex Salmond explained to the assembled media that “GERS is a Kitemark document that includes all expenditure or allocations of UK expenditure and all revenue which can be properly allocated to Scotland.” Today, operating on the basis that if you’re going to lie you might as well really go for it, he wants you to believe that his own Government’s economists incorrectly allocated £35 billion of expenditure to Scotland.

Then there’s John Swinney, for whom GERS once offered us “overwhelming evidence of Scotland’s native wealth”. It was a publication that “underlines the opportunities for independence”. A rebooted Swinney tells us “GERS is not a judgment about independence.”

The SNP Government were confident that the GERS numbers represented the “starting point for discussions of Scotland’s fiscal position following independence.” Today Finance Secretary, Derek MacKay, without any awkwardness, tells us that GERS is “not actually the starting point for Scottish independence.”

On the evening of the publication of the 2013 GERS figures, MacKay took to the TV studios to report that “what the GERS figures produces today is analysis that Scotland would be better off to the tune of over £4 billion.” On the night of the 2016 figures he was back on screen, but this time to say that “GERS doesn’t actually reflect the position of an independent Scotland.”

And where the SNP lead, the wider nationalist movement unthinkingly follows.

Take the man who designed the millions of leaflets which used GERS as the principal reason for independence, like this one, who now writes about the GERS figures asking “How can these be discredited, recalculated or reframed?”

Then there’s the leader of the nationalist business organisation, who used to literally stand beside the word ‘GERS’ (rendered in what must be 1000 point font size) while giving his presentation on how GERS made the financial case for leaving the UK. That guy ,who once commissioned pop-up banners with the GERS figures splashed over them now writes, “there is no way that GERS can be said to be a statement of the financial starting point for an independent Scotland.”

Search for yourself.

You’ll find examples of this hypocrisy that go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on…(I could go on).

Finally, to the First Minister herself. Leading the Yes campaign she said the GERS figures meant “we would start life as an independent country with healthier public finances than the rest of the UK.” She held up GERS as evidence that “the starting point for an independent Scotland will be — relative to the UK — a strong one.”

Now, without even a hint of a riddy, she says “GERS is not a statement of an independent Scotland’s opening position” and that the figures are “not a projection for how the Scottish economy would perform with independence.”

Nothing to see here. Please disperse.

Such collective shamelessness would be hilarious were there not so much at stake. Such transparent, organised dishonesty should sound alarm bells for all of us who rely on the NHS; who send our kids to nurseries and schools; and who rely on tax credits, benefits or state pensions to live our lives.

Here’s something that should act as a challenge. Below are statements made by Nicola Sturgeon, quoting GERS. I have shared the original quote and then corrected each of them with the relevant GERS figures. All I have done here is take the leader of the Yes Campaign’s reasoning and updated it. If it was true for nationalists then, it surely must be true now.

Here is Nicola Sturgeon in her own words.

These quotes are not ancient history. They are views vehemently held by leading nationalists months ago, not decades ago. The distance nationalists have travelled on GERS was not a long, painful journey re-examining what their values mean in a modern setting. It was a screeching halt in the middle of the road, before they accelerated away, tyres still smoking, in the other direction.

So, by Nicola Sturgeon’s own prospectus, according to her own government’s “authoritative” statistics, in the analysis of her own Ministers, leaving the UK means losing at least £9 billion from our public finances.

The reality is that the loss would be far higher given the need to run surpluses to ensure a new currency was credible. And £9 billion doesn’t take into account negative multiplier effects from removing such a big figure from Scotland’s economy. Remember, £9 billion is simply the fiscal transfer from the rest of the UK. Our deficit is far higher — the £15 billion figure published by the SNP government’s statisticians.

Let’s try to put this £9 billion loss to our public finances into context, again using Nicola Sturgeon’s own arguments.

In August the First Minister presented the Scottish Government’s economic analysis on the economic consequences of Brexit. It rightly pointed out how leaving an economic union with your most important trading partner will have an impact on the amount of money government has to spend. Publishing the analysis she said it set out “in the starkest possible terms” the “huge cost to Scotland” of Brexit. That cost? “Leaving the EU could reduce Scottish tax revenues by between £1.7 billion and £3.7 billion a year by 2030.”

If a potential loss in public revenues of between £1.7 billion and £3.7 billion a year, in 13 years’ time, is a “huge cost” one can only imagine what adjective the First Minister would reach for to describe losing more than £9 billion overnight.

Or to give it a different context, let’s go back to Nicola Sturgeon’s own GERS publication, specifically page 25. When the Tories came to power in 2010–11 it shows that total spending in Scotland was nearly £66 billion. After five years of George Osborne as Chancellor spending was £68 billion. Remember how painful these years were. Now imagine cutting more than £9 billion on top of what has gone already and imagine what that would feel like for families and communities across our country.

Faced with such a huge gap to fill as a result of leaving the UK, Nicola Sturgeon, who told us that independence was the way to escape UK austerity, now tells us if we leave the UK “We would deal with the deficit in the same way that the UK is dealing with its deficit.” Again, she makes my point for me.

These aren’t cuts that can be euphemised as ‘savings’ or ‘efficiencies’. So far the only real attempt by nationalists to explain how we would fill the gap has made wild suggestions, like no longer paying for state pensions. Anyone can make the public finances add up if you take the largest item of public expenditure off the balance sheet, but most sensible people would concede that’s cheating.

These cuts are of a size that what we are talking about is the closure of core public services, reductions in payments for existing claimants, and thousands upon thousands of jobs lost. Nationalists can call “scaremongering” all they like. These are their own facts.

They are left with nationalism for it’s own sake

Some people are existential nationalists. For them, the status of independence is more important than utilitarian concerns about the negative consequences or positive benefits of any constitutional decision. Most Scots aren’t and there is no credible argument for independence that isn’t an argument for gutting our public services. I still doubt if Nicola Sturgeon will call another referendum, but if she does it will be the side campaigning to remain in the United Kingdom who will be campaigning for a more socially just Scotland with better funded public services.

I’ve compared a lot of then-and-now quotations in this piece. Here’s two final ones.

Defining herself against existential nationalism, Nicola Sturgeon at the start of the referendum campaign declared:

“for me the fact of nationhood or Scottish identity is not the motive force for independence…And that is my central argument to you today. Not just that independence is more than an end in itself. But that it is only by bringing the powers home, by being independent, that we can build the better nation we all want.”

That was then. Nicola Sturgeon, as she flirts with another referendum campaign declared:

“The case for full self-government ultimately transcends the issues of Brexit, of oil, of national wealth and balance sheets and of passing political fads and trends.”

Perhaps the most significant thing revealed by the SNP’s absurd response to GERS is that Nicola Sturgeon’s cause was never independence for a social democratic purpose. It always was and remains independence at any price.

That price is too high. Isn’t it?