Mark Blyth misses point

Professor Mark Blyth made some silly comments at a recent Scottish economics conference.

He claimed an independent Scotland would have a negative balance of payments, would have nothing to sell to the world and would have to pay its share of UK debt. He’s wrong on all three counts.

Scotland is the only UK nation that has run a persistent trade surplus in goods since records began.

The world wants what Scotland produces, whether it’s whisky, salmon or energy. By contrast, England runs chronic deficits in international trade in goods. Which leads to Blyth’s second claim that Scotland would have nothing to sell.

Scotland’s renewables capacity is so vast that it will deliver nearly half of Europe’s offshore grid supply by 2035. We’re currently cabling billions of pounds of renewables to

England and getting little in return.

Third, the UK government acknowledged that Scotland would have no legal obligation to pay any UK debt because Scotland incurred no part of that debt. Rather, the UK should compensate Scotland for centuries of plunder.

The great Scottish philosopher, Adam Smith, understood that a nation’s wealth comes from the goods and services it produces. If those have value, the currency has value and the nation is wealthy.

Professor Blyth asks the wrong question. It’s not would Scotland have the money to meet people’s needs, but would it have the human and material resources to meet those needs. The answer is yes, in abundance.

They have wasted so much money and time on a doomed project rather than making the right decisions at the time to build ferries