Risk for unionists is voters feeling they have nothing to lose - Euan McColm

Scottish nationalists are remarkably consistent.

While the world turns and changes, their mission remains the same: no matter the problem, the solution is always independence. If the economy is doing well then this is evidence Scotland would thrive outside the United Kingdom. If the economy is tanking then only independence can put things right.

Strict adherence to the belief Scotland will only truly flourish if it breaks away from the UK is demanded of those who worship at the altar of separation. And if the facts don’t support the proposition, then the nationalist is asked to rely on faith. Take the leap into the unknown, say nationalist leaders, and be sure you’ll land safely on your feet.

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But for every Scot who believes there is another who does not, another who believes that departure from the Union would weaken the country.

There are, of course, those whose position on the constitution remains immutable but there are others – in numbers great enough to affect the result of any future independence referendum – who are open to persuasion by those on each side of this grinding debate.

In the past, unionists have often relied on the bottom line to keep those voters onside. Here are the facts, they said, and the facts show that Scotland outside the Union would be worse off than it is now.

I wonder whether those facts remain as potent as they once were.

Last week, the latest round of Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) figure were published. The bottom line of the statistics – released by the Scottish Government – shows that Scotland spent £15.1 billion more on public services last year than it raised in taxes. The public spending deficit – up by £2bn on the previous year – represents 8.6 per cent of the country’s GDP.

And the cherry on top of this unpalatable cake is the fact that the figures – which cover the financial year until April 5, 2020 – is that they do not reflect the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

While Scotland’s deficit soars to dizzying new heights, the UK’s also rose. But a UK-wide deficit of 2.5 per cent of GDP is nothing compared with Scotland’s.

There is, broadly, nothing new in this state of affairs. Year after year, GERS figures have shows Scotland’s deficit running far higher than the UK’s. With dependable predictability, we have seen the evidence – published by an SNP administration, remember – that Scotland gets more out of the UK than it puts in.

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But these facts have done little to halt the rise of nationalism.

Just as ardent Brexiteers dismissed concerns about their project as scaremongering, so Scottish nationalists say the numbers don’t tell the real story.

Scottish finance secretary Kate Forbes, while not quite dismissing the GERS figures, seemed perfectly relaxed when responding to them. Countries across the world, she said, had increased borrowing to record levels and, as we emerge from the current pandemic, high fiscal deficits would inevitably be one of the consequences. An independent Scotland would have the power to make different choices with different economic results.

As usual, there was no detail about what these different choices would be and how they would produce different results. All we needed to know is that Scotland would do things better.

Of course, the pro-UK political parties seized upon the statistics to bolster their anti-nationalist positions.

Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard said that separation from the UK would see Scotland “thrust into years of savage and unrelenting austerity” while the Conservative finance spokesman, Murdo Fraser, said the GERS figures were a “hammer blow” to the SNP and a “massive setback” to their independence plans.

This is the sort of stuff that used to, as they say in politics, cut through. SNP politicians would be thrown into panic by figures that appeared to undermine their case. It was for very good reasons that much of the 2014 referendum campaign saw nationalist politicians expend most of their energy on assuaging the fears of those Scots who feared that a Yes vote would have a catastrophic impact on the economy.

Unionists can, I think, no longer rely on this line of argument.

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A failure of the Remain campaign during the 2016 European Union referendum was that it did not realise the extent to which voters felt they had nothing to lose by backing Leave. Years of cuts to services and the perception that inequality was growing meant warnings about the financial impact of voting to leave the EU were easily dismissed. If things are going badly for me now, why should I listen to the politicians who say they’ll get worse if I don’t vote in the way they recommend?

There has always been a bit of this in the Scottish constitutional debate. Your hardcore Scottish nationalist has always seen the Union as a malign entity that drags Scotland down. But others – those who swim in the political mainstream – could always be depended upon by unionist politicians to ca’ canny and resist risk.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other senior unionists across the political spectrum must not assume that caution remains as prevalent as it once was.

The case for independence may lack detail, it may not have the numbers on its side, but it is full of romantic notions of liberation and anti-establishment heroism. And if the economy grows weaker, mightn’t that seem more attractive?

Sure, the impact of coronavirus on public spending might give some voters pause for thought but others – just as Brexiteers did – might well think that they have nothing to lose by voting to leave the UK in a future referendum.

Of course, the Prime Minister has the power to prevent a second referendum on Scottish independence. No amount of support for the SNP at the polls will earn the Scottish Government the legal right to put the constitutional question back to the people.

But while he denies the SNP their wish to hold Indyref2, Boris Johnson should be aware the arguments that once kept the UK together have less impact than they used to.

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