Life after Scottish Independence: lower taxes, lower spending, no free lunches

Every so often a report is published that cheers you up. Not because it contains any particularly good news but simply – that is to say, selfishly – because it appears to support notions you’ve held for some time.

So trebles all round for the Institute for Fiscal Studies whose latest report on life in Scotland after independence is published today. Sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council, the report concludes that ‘an independent Scotland could face pressure between [a] need to lower tax rates and [the] need to fix its public finances’. Well, yeah. Some of us have been making this kind of case for some time now. It’s just scaremongering, apparently.

Except, of course, it is not. I’ve never supposed an independent Scotland must fail. Paradoxically, the case for Union would be far weaker if an independent Scotland was liable to be an economic basket-case. It would be one indication that, at least in this respect, the Union had failed.