We have all lost

How very thin the crust of civilisation is. There we were, patronising the mediaevalism of other cultures, confident that we had progressed beyond all that nonsense.

Then along comes another false messiah, denying every inconvenient fact and promising a naively simplistic road to (earthly) paradise. Lo and behold, masses of our fellow citizens (on both sides) promptly revert to tribalism. The English backlash is no prettier than the Anglophobia that provoked it.

Perhaps someone will remind me when was the last time an arbitrary line drawn on a map, leaving minorities numbering hundreds of thousands on each 'wrong' side, helped solve rather than create problems?

Or the last time that emphasising what divides people rather than what unites them led to peace and prosperity?

Whoever wins on Thursday, we have all lost already.

Goodbye Primrose Path

If you see a friend walking towards the edge of a cliff whilst playing a game of blind man's buff, what do you do? Call out a warning, I expect.

You might well be surprised and upset when your friend shouts back, "Scaremonger!" and continues to walk forward.

"No really, there's a cliff!" you call.

"Disgraceful negativism!" he replies, sticking his fingers in his ears and starting to hum "La,la,la - can't hear you!"

Separatists amongst Scots seem to believe that as long as you dress up market forces as pantomime villains and hang a sign round their necks labelling them 'English Tory Scares' you may safely ignore them. Economic laws do not apply in the land of Braveheart.

But isn't it really going a bit far to respond to relocation decisions from major financial institutions by continuing to shout 'Scaremonger'?

Just what counts as economic evidence if capital flight does not?

People who don't trust what might happen at the ballot box are voting with their wallets.

It might be a good time to remove the blindfold and take a look ahead.

Scottish Monetary Policy

If Scotland continues to use sterling despite no longer being part of a currency union, we will have no choice but to accept whatever monetary policy the UK decides upon.  There are 58 million in the UK and 5 million of us.  They will have no more reason to take account of a foreign Scotland when determining their monetary policy than the USA has to take account of Panama when determining theirs.

Deduct the forty odd Scottish Labour seats and the chances are that the next UK government is Conservative.  They will implement Conservative monetary policy in the UK and that policy will apply in Scotland because Scotland will not have its own monetary policy.

Perversely this means that, so long as Salmond’s Currency Plan B remains the use of sterling without agreement,  voting 'yes' in the referendum results in the imposition of a Tory government's monetary policy in Scotland.

Perhaps this is what he means when he promises that Scotland will get what it votes for.