On 12th June Nicola Sturgeon said
I have previously
welcomed the UK Government's interventions, especially the furlough scheme which
has helped to preserve jobs during this period but, in my view, it is now time
to signal a further extension of Treasury support.
Other countries have
already made this move, including France where plans are being put in place for
a long-term partial activity scheme covering possibly, as long as the next two
years.
My immediate reaction to this was to reflect that
Sturgeon had until recently demanded an independence referendum in 2020 and at
the beginning of the Covid crisis merely wished to postpone it until 2021.
If next years Scottish Parliament elections go ahead
as planned will the SNP be campaigning for a second referendum while Scots are
still furloughed, and our wages are being paid by the British Government? How
can you campaign for independence while admitting your dependence?
Devolution has given Scotland a degree of fiscal autonomy.
We can raise and lower our own taxation rates. We can borrow. But the truth
that Scottish nationalists are unwilling to admit is that Scotland spends much
more than we earn through taxes and other revenues raised in Scotland.
Even if Scotland were independent, we could not afford
a furlough scheme like the one introduced by the Chancellor Rishi Sunak.
What happens to countries that cannot afford such
schemes? In countries like Russia everyone was told to stay at home, but they
had to rely on their own savings. Eventually everyone had to go back to work
even though Covid cases were still very high. They had to do this because they
didn’t have any money.
France is similarly insolvent like Italy and Spain. It
is for this reason that Emmanuel Macron is arguing for Corona bonds whereby the
EU as a whole bails out countries who are struggling to deal with the economic
consequences of Covid. France wants the EU to become more like Britain. Macron
wants the European Central Bank to behave like the Bank of England whereby money
is transferred to where it is needed. This is being resisted by the German
Constitutional Court and also those countries like the Netherlands and Austria
who pay more into the EU than they take out.
There are arguments for the Macron approach. If the EU
wants to continue with monetary union, it will eventually have to accept
political and fiscal union too. But it amounts to the Germans paying French
wages and it is understandable why the Germans are dubious about it.
But imagine if while demanding that the Germans paid
French wages, the French were also continually demanding that they should have
a referendum on leaving the EU. How would the Germans react?
The condition for the possibility of any further extension
of the British furlough scheme must be a legal commitment expressed in an Act
of Parliament that Scotland will not seek independence for the foreseeable
future.
The furlough scheme is an investment in our shared
future. Why invest in someone who is going to walk away the first chance he
gets.
The present crisis has destroyed the argument for independence.
It has shown that a single nation state can financially deal with the crisis in
the way that the dysfunctional EU cannot. If Scotland had depended on EU/German generosity,
we would have discovered it was at best a loan and at worst work or starve.
But it is not English money that is keeping Britain
going. There is no more England than there is Wessex or Mercia. English people
are equally being bailed out by British money as Scots, Welsh and Northern
Irish. It is as one country that we will tackle the challenges ahead. We need the
unity that says we don’t care where you come from nor where your parents came
from. We are all British people no matter our religious beliefs and ethnic
origin. Cease fighting about what divides us and instead unite against an
illness that threatens all of our futures. Let us go forward together.
