No-nonsense businesspeople will be very much what’s needed in the aftermath of the Scottish Catastrophe, as it will surely come to be known whichever way the vote has fallen. No nation, independent or semi-autonomous, can hope to prosper on the basis of the wild welfare promises of the SNP, unsupported by any plan to attract investment and stimulate growth. Only a resurgent private sector can drag Scotland out of the tax-and-spend peat bog into which this referendum has driven it deeper than ever — and that will take quite some grit on the part of entrepreneurs, given the fundamental hostility of both the SNP and Scottish Labour.
But grit —even granite ruthlessness — is a characteristic shared by the outstanding Scottish business builders of the past. Think of Dr William Jardine of Lochmaben, who became the great opium trader of Canton; or Dunfermline-born Andrew Carnegie, robber baron of 19th-century American steel; or Robert Fleming, Dundonian financier of American railroads.
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