You can’t put a price on freedom. Well now, it seems, you can: or rather, one senior academic has done so and his verdict? Scottish independence will cost £200 million.
On the surface, Professor Patrick Dunleavy’s conclusions on the set-up costs for an independent Scotland look good for the Nationalists.
After all, that £200 million is remarkably close to the figure Alex Salmond has been throwing around for the last week or so and some considerable distance from the £2.7 billion figure the Treasury has been bandying around.
In fact, Prof Dunleavy’s report (which was published today) makes the Treasury look pretty foolish and more than a bit amateurish.
For weeks, Danny Alexander has been warning of set-up costs of £2.7 billion for a new Scottish state – 12 times the figure that Prof Dunleavy has come up with.
But, as ever in politics, it is not as quite as simple as that (however much the Nats would like it to be).
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