Recalling the collapse of RBS, Tyler Cowen suggests that Scottish independence might not be such a nifty notion:
That’s a pretty widely-held view and it is not, I think, wholly coincidental that Alex Salmond discovered* the apparently unlimited potential of renewable energy at roughly the same time banking began to seem a less useful foundation for future prosperity.The conceptual point is simple. If you think that the world is now more prone to financial crises (and I do), the optimal size for a nation-state has gone up. Risk-sharing really matters.
Risk-sharing**, however, is at the heart of it. It was the main reason why the SNP became a pro-EU party. Sovereignty would be pooled in Brussels, not in London and you could plausibly claim that Brussels-London-Edinburgh was too long an address and so it made sense to cut out the middle-man. So far so good even if Free By 93 was one of the more risible election slogans of my life.
That was then, laddie, and this is now. The euro doesn’t look like much of a safe haven now (which isn’t to say that sterling must always be a secure berth either) and while you can certainly and not implausibly claim that Westminster and Frankfurt would have each contributed billions to a post-independence RBS bail-out fund since risk is shared across borders it remains the case that having to make this case is, generally speaking, the prelude to losing the argument.
So we can expect to hear much more of this in the years ahead. But Unionism needs to offer more than just this. It needs a case that rests on something bigger, grander, more nourishing than simple self-interest or fear of the alternatives. It needs to speak for itself as something that is worth speaking for. Finding a way of crafting that message – one that speaks to hopes and not just fears and to patriotism not nationalism – is the challenge for whoever emerges as Unionism’s champion.
I suspect a referendum campaign can be won with a purely negative approach but that would, in the end, be a stingy, shabby, demeaning victory won at a heavy price and that left even the victors feeling queasy. So better stories are needed too.
*Yes, the SNP had aspirations and even commitments on renewables before 2008 but it wasn’t nearly as large a part of their story as it would subsequently become. Now this stuff can “re-industrialise” Scotland. Apparently.
**And, of course, there are plenty of smallish countries that are doing fine or at least OK at present.
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