Monday 13 January 2014
Salmond's preening is premature
Is anyone else embarrassed by the First Minister's threats to walk away from the UK's debt if they don't let us keep the £ after independence? Now, he's crowing and preening himself as if he's done something great when, actually, his posturing has threatened to spook the bond markets and has resulted in today's announcement by the UK Treasury that it will guarantee all UK Government debt issued up until the date of independence. Salmond's blinkered brinksmanship in pursuit of his goal of independence is now threatening us all. If the UK Government has to pay more to borrow, we'll all have to pay more to borrow and, since even a small increase in the cost of borrowing at the moment will push many families over the edge, it's no surprise that the Treasury has acted definitively. To do otherwise would have been irresponsible. Would that our First Minister had a similar sense of responsibility to the people he governs. If we vote yes later this year (and Calton sincerely hopes we don't) the road to financial stability as an independent nation will be rocky enough without Salmond's threats and bully-boy antics. He has blown out of the water any hope of an amicable divorce in the wake of a yes vote and we all know what that means - the only winners will be the lawyers!
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Dear Calton -
ReplyDeleteThis is a very insightful summation of the situation.
I do believe, though, that it won’t be the lawyers who will win – realpolitik, as opposed to any accepted laws of engagement between countries (including those governing the EU), will dictate what happens after separation. And the country with a population of 58 million will win against a country of 5 every single time.
I think this will translate itself into reality thus: in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote, the new rUK government, irrespective of which party gets in in 2015, will be elected on a specific ticket of protecting rUK interests; which means that it will have an electoral mandate to hit us for six in all negotiations. In such circumstances I think we will come out of it far worse than we can possibly conceive presently, and there won’t be a jot that the fleet of Scottish Government lawyers will be able to do about it.
Of course, I might (and I hope to) prove way off beam with this analysis, but the tendency that sovereign countries defend their own selfish interests tends to suggest I won’t.
All the best, Derrick