MORNING SERIAL
Also, these answers are not static.
The costs of each of these will fluctuate, so after five years, the factors leading to your initial decision will have changed, potentially shifting your conclusion about whether it was affordable in the first place.
Obviously, the financial implications, variables and potential consequences of Wales becoming independent are infinitely more complicated than buying a car.
Many of these questions stem from the decisions that would be made by an independent Wales, such as the form of its armed services.
If you don’t pay for nuclear weapons, you save some fairly sizeable amounts of cash.
The additional challenge is that all the information needed to assess the decision isn’t readily available.
Take VAT, for example. If you have ever been to the US, you will be aware of, and probably at times annoyed by, the fact that the price you saw on the label was actually higher when you got to the till.
In the US, it is really easy to see where VAT is paid (though in the US they actually pay a sales tax, but you take my point).
It was paid at that tax register, in this place, on that particular day.
This isn’t the case in the UK. When we talk about the amount of VAT raised in England or Wales, we are using approximations.
These estimates are likely pretty accurate, but they are estimates all the same. This is also the case when we talk about exports.
We know how much the UK exports abroad; we know how much Wales exports abroad; but there is no official data for how much England and Wales import and export to each other, because they are one marketplace.
Again, we can take a decent stab at guessing what the figure is, but it is important to stress that we don’t always know exactly (though we do know a lot of data for certain).
I tell you this not only to be upfront, but because many advocates for independence will use this ambiguity to try to forward their own argument.
> Independent Nation by Will Hayward is published by Biteback Publishing at £15 hardback and £9.99 ebook, https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/independent-nation
CONTINUES TOMORROW