It is apparent that the Scottish Government is quite capable of maintaining the intensity of the controversy concerning an independence referendum throughout the whole period between now and the election in May 2011. In that period there will be at least one obviously relevant major political development, the UK general election this year, and one obviously major economic development.
Blighty is going to perform an economic miracle with Falklands oil? In that time frame? Ever? For that time frame what is being predicted by those who saw the present recession coming a long way off is extremely serious trouble for the UK, not least because its ridiculously hefty deficit will be greater than Greece’s ridiculously hefty deficit this year.
The CDS (Credit Default Swap) speculators who have been targeting Greece are very much expected to target dear old Blighty in a big way after feasting on Portugal and Spain and one or two other states. If the UK triple-A credit rating is lost as a result of this, the cost of servicing Blighty’s ginormous public debt goes up, and in consequence of this public spending will have to come down possibly even more than one might imagine.
If the Scottish budget provided by Westminster looks like being slashed, will the independence option be likely to seem more or less attractive, considering the size of the public sector in UK Scotland? As First Minister Salmond noted in an interview in a major financial journal during a recent official visit to France, those who forecast that there would never be a Scottish parliament and that he would never lead an SNP government are the people who are claiming that a majority of the Scottish electorate cannot be induced to vote for independence. They are also for ever telling us that everything in the Blighty garden is lovely.
In reality the W double dip that respected economists such as Drs Roubini and *Jorion, among others, have been warning about may just conceivably provide the economic and fiscal environment in which the Scottish constitutional issue will be coming to a head. Far be it from me to make such a prediction or indeed any prediction, but there does seem to be a swarm of locusts on the horizon, and it seems to be heading for Blighty.
*”Paul Jorion est un de ceux que l’on devrait écouter. Economiste et anthropologue, il a une vaste expérience du monde financier. Il a publié des travaux importants anticipant la crise et ce qui s’est passé, et a suggéré plusieurs propositions qui méritent l’attention de tous. Au cœur de la crise, il voit l’état de sauvagerie dans laquelle on a laissé la finance évoluer dans les dernières décennies, sous couvert d’une myriade de règlements, qui, contrairement à ce qui était prévu, ont au contraire favorisé toutes les formes d’abus et les dérives les plus hallucinantes.” (Manuel Maria Carrilho, ancien ministre portugais, La bulle du conformisme, Diario de Noticias, February 24th 2010)
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