Star SNP economist fails to find the positive case for independence

You can imagine the glee with which Scottish government ministers and their advisers greeted the news they had a new convert arguing the case for Scotland exiting the UK, and that it was a Scots-born academic making a name for himself as an edgy, left-wing economist.

Mark Blyth, hailing from Dundee but now professor of international economics at the Ivy League Brown University in Rhode Island, and co-author of anti-austerity book Angrynomics, was signed up to a new Scottish government economic advisory council last summer. The group, which had a remit to publish a strategy paper on turbo-charging Scotland’s economy, replaced a previous Council of Economic Advisors set up by Alex Salmond.

However, the sweary Scotsman was causing trouble for the SNP almost before the ink was dry on the announcement of his appointment, with the emergence of a video of Blyth ridiculing economic plans for secession for ‘a complete lack of specificity’.