While Salmond landed some blows in the debate about Scottish independence last night he was still unable to answer the crucial questions
While Salmond landed some blows in the debate about Scottish independence last night he was still unable to answer the crucial questions
In some ways it is rather heartening that there is an audience left for the utopia Alex Salmond is trying to sell Scotland. One in which the cuts agenda will not give way to the bedroom tax, nor draw money away from the National Health Service. This is the kind of society I want to live in.
And clearly the way Salmond sells it is working. After his lacklustre performance last time round he has, according to a snap poll of 505 voters in Scotland for the Guardian by ICM, the backing of some 71% of viewers compared with 29% who backed Darling.
But as Darling said last night in the debate, a good line is not always the good answer.
Indeed Darling, the more critical and analytical of the two, was correct to pursue answers to questions that had not been previously answered. Is Scotland safe in Salmond’s hands given the estimates of oil barrels in Scotland? Has the currency question been sufficiently settled yet?
Darling was right to say that in the 670 page white paper, Scotland’s Future : Your Guide to an Independent Scotland, there was just one page of numbers for just one year, and as it turns out estimates were lower than originally thought. Without the right data it is fair enough to accuse the Yes campaign of “gambling children’s future.”
This is backed up by a recent interview with Energy Voice, where Sir Ian Wood pointed out that Scotland’s oil reserves had been “massively overestimated” and the prediction that 24 billion barrels remain in the North Sea is “45% to 65% too high”. Rather, Sir Ian estimates there remains between “15 billion and 16.5 billion barrels.” This requires significant alterations to the economics Scotland’s future.
Once again showing that the letters pages in The Scotsman provides better analysis than debates between campaign leaders, Paul Wright of Edinburgh last month said:
When we read the small print of Scotland’s Future we discover that the claims of vast oil wealth are built on a flimsy foundation. They are based on a hypothetical economic model which assumes a geographical distribution of reserves. This in turn relates to a principle (the median line principle) that has been established for purposes of economic analysis and determining zones of civil jurisdiction (but not for distribution of oil and gas reserves).
Salmond fell flat again on currency (three plan-B’s is an idiotic line to deliver, obviously making Plan-A sound impossible) and scare-stories about hospitals in the UK, whereas the blows that landed were on an odd statements about the shared platform of his campaign (though the Yes vote has support from various political parties, including Labour, as well), and a point about the cost of replacing Trident, which while relevant, in context of the evening (Darling was pressing Salmond on his own number crunching at the time, and winning) was classic smoke and mirrors.
The truth is that an independent Scotland would still face the same struggles to deliver quality public services as the rest of the UK does. While of course we must accept the political dimension of this within the cuts agenda, there are other external factors that must be appreciated, for example an ageing population that will require more investment money into a national health service.
And we mustn’t forget that the SNP themselves are given to short-term strategies that are contrary to the social-democratic tradition. We hear less and less of, for example, the party’s desire to lower corporation tax in Scotland.
Salmond is happy to criticise Darling for sharing platforms with the Tories, some fuss had even been made in the past about the Better Together campaign accepting money from a major Conservative Party donor, but the SNP does not exist only from the good willing of normal people off the street of Scotland. It also has multimillionaire backers such as Brian Souter, the owner of Stagecoach.
Working people, who it has to be said have been more pro-independence throughout the campaign, should not have to put up with the grotesque policies of the coalition government, sure. But an independent Scotland will not exist in a utopian vacuum. Even the SNP woo millionaires for funding and doth their caps at rich businessmen by promising to lower corporation tax.
The point is we have to tackle this crisis, perpetrated by establishment politicians of all colours, together. Alex Salmond remains a snake oil salesman.
Carl Packman is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
99 Responses to “Alex Salmond is still a snake oil salesman”
Donald Carthlan
And you Unionists want to maintain the Union, no matter the cost to Scotland. See here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yuj1bKFldlc
“If I’m honest, even if the Scottish people are going to be better off economically etc, I would still be against breaking away from the Union.”
Labour MP Jim Hood February 6th 2014.
Donald Carthlan
“Except of course, you’d want us to be independent even if there was no oil in the north sea, no renewable energy in Scotland or Financial Services Industry in Edinburgh.”
And you Unionists want to maintain the Union, no matter the cost to Scotland. See here -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yuj1bKFldlc
“If I’m honest, even if the Scottish people are going to be better off economically etc, I would still be against breaking away from the Union.”
Labour MP Jim Hood February 6th 2014.
Donald Carthlan
Sidney Ruff-Diamond
Simply incorrect Spain, like Scotland, in the 1970’s was then home to part of the US Navy’s Polaris missile submarine fleet (based in the port of Rota on the south-western Spanish coast), and the US wanted it to stay there. Here’s the Australian newspaper The Age reporting the story:
“US to keep Spanish bases”
A triumph for American diplomacy (gunboat or otherwise), then? It’s not as clear-cut as you might think. Here’s the rather different take run by the Star-News of Wilmington, North Carolina the next day:
“US to abandon Spanish bases”.
Surely some mistake? Well, no. The deal that Franco’s boys agreed with the Americans did indeed let the US keep bases in Spain, including Rota, but the Polaris subs were to leave Spain by 1979, as reported by our friends at the Star-News. That year the submarines and their supporting ships duly left Rota for Kings Bay, Georgia.
Now by your argument the Americans must at least have been a bit upset by this snub? Perhaps, but if so they had a funny way of showing it. Rather than being banished into the outer darkness of international relations, Spain got pushed into NATO and the EEC, with the Americans doing a lot of the pushing.
Here’s a short account of Spain and NATO see here – http://www.cvce.eu/content/publication/2010/4/28/831ba342-0a7c-4ead-b35f-80fd52b01de9/publishable_en.pdf. On page 3 of that report is a list of some of the concessions made by the Spanish government in order to get backing in parliament for NATO membership. Straight in at no.4 is“the non-nuclearisation of Spanish territory”.
dougthedug
But without Scotland NATO would have a huge hole in its coverage of the North Atlantic as Ireland is already neutral.
Especially dangerous for NATO as Scotland is the southern edge of the Greenland/Iceland/UK gap which is the only route out of northern Russia for their Navy.
Scotland doesn’t need NATO, NATO needs Scotland.
Jimmy Laing
She made one honest mistake.