Swinney defends economic case after unionist attacks

Published on Sunday 19 October 2008 22:13

SNP political heavyweights hit back yesterday in the increasingly acrimonious row over an independent Scotland's ability to cope with the economic crisis.

John Swinney, the finance secretary, and Stewart Hosie, the SNP's economic spokesman in the Commons, led a passionate assault on the Labour government at a packed fringe meeting in Perth yesterday.

They claimed that Scotland could have thrived as well as Norway in the present downturn.

The Nationalists have come under a sustained assault over the past week from unionists warning that an independent Scotland could never have afforded the bank bail-out orchestrated by Gordon Brown last week.

Jim Murphy, the Scottish Secretary, referred to Ireland and Iceland as the "arc of insolvency" – deriding SNP demands for Scotland to join what they used to call the "arc of prosperity".

Mr Swinney and Mr Hosie insisted that Nationalists had to be "robust" in blaming Mr Brown and Labour, not just for their roles in the economic crisis but in failing to act decisively enough in dealing with it.

Mr Hosie said: "The global crisis is not growing out of a tree in the Amazon, it is the result of decisions taken by finance ministers."

Mr Swinney attacked the "recklessness of financial management and financial decision-making by the current UK government".