Public spending in Scotland in the last financial year totalled £68.6 billion. Taxes levied in Scotland amounted to just £53.7 billion, a difference of some £15 billion. Were Scotland an independent country, it would have a budget deficit of around 10 per cent of GDP, among the highest in the world. But Scotland is not independent and these are just figures compiled under the so called Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) statistics. They were introduced by the Conservatives in the 1990s before devolution to demonstrate the importance to Scotland of continued membership of the UK. Never has the point been made more starkly.

In a Union, it should not matter that one constituent part has higher spending and lower revenues than another. Fiscal transfers from wealthier to poorer areas are crucial to national and social cohesion. However, the Scottish National Party does not wish to be part of this Union, even though the Scottish people voted two years ago to stay in. There have been mutterings from the SNP about a second referendum following the UK-wide decision to leave the EU because Scotland voted to remain. But the GERS figures show this to be utterly fanciful. Scotland could not survive on its own, certainly not with the levels of expenditure it has now.

The case for independence was predicated on tax revenues from North Sea oil, but Scotland’s share of these fell by 97 per cent to just £60 million in the last financial year. There is no realistic prospect that Scotland would now seek to turn its back on its main export market. Moreover, to get its public finances into the necessary condition to join the EU as an independent nation, as the SNP promises, would require austerity measures that the nationalists would never contemplate.

David Fuller's view

I credit Nicola Sturgeon with chutzpah but she has overplayed an increasingly weak hand.  Had Scotland won their 2014 independence referendum when Alex Salmond was First Minister of Scotland, the region would have been in serious financial trouble.  Salmond resigned immediately after the 55 to 44 percent result which rejected independence.  Sturgeon would presumably have to do the same if she dared to call for another referendum and lost.

The recent Olympics were a wonderfully unifying factor for the UK’s young athletes and the goodwill generated has spread across the country.  Canny Scots would reject a second independence referendum, even though Scotland did not support Brexit.  The EU’s Socialist appeal is waning and a united UK is more likely to prosper over the longer term, even though the next year or two may be challenging.  

Here is a PDF of the article.