Scotland - A Failed Socialist Experiment
Scotland another failed Socialist experiment
Had the SNP achieved its stated ambition of ‘independence day’ in the spring of 2016, what would it be doing now? We don’t have to imagine. This week, the Scottish government published figures for its national finances. They show that the Scottish government spends £127 for every £100 it raises in tax — a ratio unequalled anywhere else in the developed world. It can do this because so much extra money is sent up from England. For every £100 spent per English head, £120 is spent on a Scottish one.
Greece, Italy, Albania — no country, no matter how economically distressed, has such a mismatch between state spending and tax collected. Scotland’s deficit — at 10.1 per cent of GDP — is now twice as big as the next-worst country (Japan). No independent country could afford to run a deficit of Scottish magnitude: to borrow on world markets, you need a semblance of fiscal respectability. Even to join the European Union, Scotland’s deficit would need to be below 3 per cent. So an independent Scotland would right now be facing a choice: state spending down by 15 per cent, taxes up by 19 per cent, or a combination of the two.
The cuts are certainly doable. The Scottish government machine is vast, and at times the whole enterprise looks like an attempt to recreate East Germany. Nicola Sturgeon could certainly propose a rapid slimming-down of government, and say that this is a price worth paying for secession. But as her own government figures now make clear, she could not pretend that an independent Scotland could sustain current levels of largesse
A typical article from The Spectator.
Any suggestion of a different world view from that of the Conservative Party, and it goes into attack mode.