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
“wouldn’t have a long future of oil revenue”
Care to provide any evidence to back this statement up? I disagree I would direct your attention to a recent article by the Investors Chronicle. SEE here – http://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/2014/07/24/tips-and-ideas/share-tips/tips-of-the-week/north-sea-incentives-to-boost-enquest-MIfvyVzluLyGAzDJtEGrmO/article.html which states:
“We think that Westminster has been deliberately downplaying the potential of the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) ahead of September’s referendum on Scottish independence.
The Department of Energy has certainly been far more subdued than it was at the time of the February publication of Sir Ian Wood’s preliminary findings on the future of offshore oil & gas in the UK.
According to the report, the UK economy could generate £200bn over the next 20 years through the recovery of only 3-4bn barrels of North Sea oil and gas.Many analysts believe that the potential is much greater.“
When highly respected oil-industry figure Professor Sir Donald Mackay – a former economic adviser to the Secretary of State for Scotland for over 25 years – told the Sunday Times in July that the UK government’s figures for future oil revenues were wildly understated, not a single other newspaper picked up the story.
But the recent revelations are simply too big (and too many) to conceal. Oil rig workers have been telling their families of the magnitude of the finds as they get sent home on full pay to await the start of operations. Facilities in Shetland are so overburdened with new workers they’re having to be accommodated in huge floating hotels, SEE HERE -http://www.shetnews.co.uk/newsbites/6926-third-accommodation-barge-due . And even the UK media can’t keep a secret that size.
“Scotland’s oil and gas revenues could be up to six times higher than those forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), according to an independent report which Alex Salmond, the first minister, said ‘blows another huge hole in the credibility’ of the London-based fiscal watchdog.
N-56, an apolitical economic think tank, has published an analysis of Scotland’s future oil and gas revenues which suggests they could be worth £365bn by 2040. The OBR has forecast a more conservative figure of £57bn.
The report, which draws on oil production forecasts and barrel prices by Oil & Gas UK, the industry body, and the findings of a recent review by oil tycoon Sir Ian Wood into maximising North Sea oil revenues, states that recoverable oil and gas reserves could range from 15bn to 24bn barrels.
It claims that Scotland’s public finances could be comfortably in surplus by as much as 7% of GDP by 2020 – more than £12bn per annum – with surpluses of £9bn to £11bn a year in the 2020s and £5bn a year in the 2030s.
The report calculates that an oil fund, assuming a modest 3.2% real interest rate, could grow to more than £300bn – in today’s prices – by the end of the 2030s.”
Donald Carthlan
Kryten2k35
“You would have to leave the EU”
Completely and utterly false, for a start the UK Government refuses to clarify Scotland’s position in the EU as evidenced by this article SEE HERE – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-20164826 which states:
“The UK government has said it would not ask the European Commission’s view on whether an independent Scotland would remain a member of the EU. The statement follows confirmation from the commission that it would offer its opinion if asked to by a member state.”
It’s very difficult to imagine why the UK government would refuse to ask that question if it was confident that its position (namely that Scotland’s membership would be delayed for years) was correct. What is certain is that no serious politician, commentator or EU bureaucrat has ever suggested that the EU – an expansionist organisation – wouldn’t want resource-rich Scotland as a member state. So the only real debate is on how Scotland would go from being part of a member state to being a member state in its own right, and if you accept the premise that the EU wants Scotland in, then it’s clearly in everyone’s interests to sort that out as quickly and smoothly as possible. For that reason, most impartial experts, and even honest Unionists, expect the process to be made very quick and easy – not as a special favour to Scotland but because it’s the common-sense plan, and also because the alternative would be to cast the entire continent into unimaginable, unprecedented and completely needless chaos from which absolutely no-one would benefit.
Scotland is currently in the EU (as part of the UK), which means that hundreds of thousands of Scots live abroad, and hundreds of thousands of EU citizens live in Scotland. Were Scotland to be ejected even temporarily, millions of people – including Scots living in England and vice versa – could lose their rights of residence overnight and have to be thrown out of their respective countries. No mechanism exists within the EU for ejecting existing citizens against their will. The administrative mayhem would last for decades, which is why the pro-Union MP Eric Joyce dismissed the idea in February this year as:
“Manifest nonsense. I want Scotland to remain part of the UK, but not on the basis of an argument deploying blatant threats and lies.”
Graham Avery, the Honorary Director-General of the European Commission and senior policy adviser at the European Policy Centre in Brussels with four decades of experience in negotiating EU enlargement (including the UK’s own entry), told the UK Parliament SEE HERE -http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmfaff/writev/643/m05.htm in 2012 that:
“From the political point of view, Scotland has been in the EU for 40 years; and its people have acquired rights as European citizens. If they wish to remain in the EU, they could hardly be asked to leave and then reapply for membership in the same way as the people of a non-member country such as Turkey. The point can be illustrated by considering another example: if a break-up of Belgium were agreed between Wallonia and Flanders, it is inconceivable that other EU members would require 11 million people to leave the EU and then reapply for membership.”
In 2014 he also told Holyrood’s European committee: “A situation where Scotland was outside the European Union and not applying European rules would be a legal nightmare for the people in the rest of the United Kingdom and the British Government has to take account of that. I think it would be very, very unfortunate for the rest of the United Kingdom if Scotland was not a member from day one of independence.” SEE HERE – https://archive.today/XcVVw
In February 2013 Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, former Deputy Secretary-General of the UN and a Foreign Office minister in the last UK Labour government, told the BBC that: “Whatever the legal formalities, in terms of the political will if Scotland were to vote for independence, I think Europe would try to smooth its way into taking its place as a European member.” SEE HERE – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-21525120
In July 2014, Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, professor of European law and human rights at Oxford University and author of a book on EU constitutional law, agreed: “Despite assertions to the contrary from UK lawyers, EU lawyers and EU officials, any future independent Scotland’s EU membership should be assured, and its transition from EU membership as a part of the UK to EU membership as an independent Scotland relatively smooth and straightforward.” SEE HERE – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-28197298
And the same month, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker was reported as saying Scotland would be treated as a “special and separate case”, rather than a new applicant SEE HERE -. https://archive.today/Jb9qA
Donald Carthlan
@kryten2k35:disqus
Well duh that goes without saying.
Sidney Ruff-Diamond
Yes. And like Denmark and Norway, Scotland will accept nuclear wepons carrying subs in its ports, despite stating no Trident o9n Scottish soil.
David Stringer
“Salmond fell flat again on currency (three plan-B’s is an idiotic line to deliver, obviously making Plan-A sound impossible)”
This isn’t obvious to me at all – it makes it sound like he’s well prepared. I’m no fan of Salmond, but this is an idiotic argument to make.