Brian Wilson: SNP takes a pounding over U-turn

Once derided by the Nationalist cause, the SNP is now selling the virtues of the Bank of England. Picture: PA

For all of these reasons, it is a fundamental issue on which one might expect any Nationalist movement to have a settled and robust view. How can you sell the idea of political separation when you cannot tell the people what currency they are going to be paid in or what their savings will be counted in?

Not very long ago, the Scottish Nationalists had such a settled view. The laggards of effete Whitehall were derided for their failure to embrace the euro. The pound sterling, in the immortal words of Alex Salmond, was “a millstone round our neck”.

Since time immemorial, it was part of the Nationalist mantra that the Bank of England – not, in itself, their favourite terminology – ran monetary policy in the interests of “the south-east”, while the very different needs of Scotland were ignored. And that was within the one country. It was just another grievance to be stoked, but who would have thought that this villain would one day be appointed the Nationalists’ saviour?

For things changed and the euro, let us say, went out of fashion. The wisdom of staying outside that monetary union became apparent to about 99 per cent of the population, in Scotland as in the rest of the United Kingdom. “Scotland in the euro” became an unsaleable proposition.

But our Nationalist friends are nothing if not flexible. Having adjudged that floating the groat would not do much for their credibility either, they were left with only one option. So, they came up with a brilliant new policy. The millstone would be transformed into a life-raft. The pound sterling would be Scotland’s future. Needless to say, they did not ask anyone else if they thought this might be such a great idea, far less consider their legitimate interests. The fact that the pound sterling is the currency of the state from which they are seeking to secede may seem to lesser mortals like a significant inconvenience. But not to those who just make it up as they go along.

In the same way as with membership of the European Union, the SNP has proceeded on the basis of assertion. If it said often enough and bombastically enough that Scotland would have automatic membership of the EU, then surely it must be true? And, for good measure, it alone could walk in without joining the euro.

Much the same farce is being played out over Nato, the object of so much Nationalist virulence over the past half century during which they opposed just about very action, however humane, that was ever undertaken. Now the policy has changed and again we were told an independent Scotland would automatically be ushered in. That, too, has been confirmed as a baseless assertion.

Now the SNP has gone for the hat-trick on arguably the biggest issue of the lot. Claiming that Scotland would, by right, retain the pound sterling is rapidly being exposed as just as big a fallacy as the other two. And the question then arises of why a separatist movement would want to retain the currency of the state which it is so desperate to leave? The obvious next question is: why bother leaving?

It may not be the most inspiring slogan, but the SNP is now fighting under the policy of taking Scotland to the same status that the Republic of Ireland decided to escape from 30 years ago. The Irish decided that, as a separate state with a very different economy from the UK, it no longer made sense to be tied to sterling.

So, first it created its own currency – remember the punt? –and then, with a great sigh of relief, it joined the euro when it came along. So, there is nothing new about what the Nationalists are advocating. Ireland has been there and found it such an unsatisfactory arrangement that it chose to get rid of it. Why on earth should Scotland opt to go down the same path in the full knowledge of where it led?

From my own experience, I know that the Bank of England is not the south-east fixated body of previous Nationalist fiction. It may have its failings, but it most certainly takes account of regional and national economic differences within the United Kingdom in a way that it would be under absolutely no obligation to do if we were a separate, supplicant state.

At the root of this shambles is the dual approach that the Nationalist campaign is obliged to adopt. On the one hand, it tells us that the referendum offers the biggest change in 300 years. At the same time, it seeks to reassure the sceptical masses that it is really little more than a managerial reorganisation in which most things would stay the same – from Queen to currency, through EU and Nato.

Alas, the SNP cannot have it both ways. And the former version is much closer to the truth than latter. You cannot break up a 300-year-old union without massive pain and disruption – economic and social as well as political. The more the Nationalists deny that reality, the less credible their case becomes.

The assumption that this would be a benign parting of the ways, with the rump state exuding nothing but generosity and goodwill towards the seceding nation, is based on hope rather than evidence. The idea that the Bank of England would give a second thought to the pleadings of those who had just turned their back on the United Kingdom is just another tale which was spun and is now being unspun. When it suits the SNP’s script, we are told that Scotland would become a Scandinavian-style Valhalla without the tax rates to match.

It would be difficult trick at the best of times. But it becomes nonsensical when, at the same time, it is the SNP’s policy to leave all of the macro-economic decisions in the hands of what by then would be a foreign state. I doubt if Norway would want to be run by the Bank of England.

There are minorities on both sides of the independence debate whose views come entirely from the heart rather than the head and who are impervious to arguments about currency or anything else. These are respectable positions to hold. For most, however, ever-changing, unsubstantiated assertion is simply not enough and once again that is what the Nationalist currency policy adds up to.