Ruth Davidson on the collapse of the SNP's economic model

Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, had a superb piece at Conservative Home this week about the fact that the economic prospectus on which the SNP fought the independence referendum has been exposed as delusional.

She begins by describing trying to pin down Alex Salmond during the referendum about how exactly the economics of SNP proposals for Independence would work as like "nailing custard to a wall" and continued:

"Time after time, our erstwhile First Minister would endeavour to dodge, weave, bluster and bluff his way past fair questions. Projections on Scotland’s oil revenues were hopelessly optimistic – wouldn’t it be a good idea if he took actual receipts into account? Salmond would pop up on his hindquarters and trot out the usual lines about how his opponents were doing Scotland down. By contrast, his numbers were “reasonable” and “sensible”. Move along – nothing to see here.

"Thankfully, the majority of Scottish voters opted for us to remain part of the UK last year. Salmond lost. But, remarkably, the SNP managed to skip free from that defeat without having to conduct a post mortem. Immediately after the referendum, the debate in Scotland moved onto a plan to deliver more devolution to the Holyrood parliament. Then the general election occupied everyone’s attention.

"The SNP lost the battle – but it has never been forced to examine the fundamental reasons why. Salmond and his team have never really been put on the spot."

The whole article is well worth a read here.

Comments

Jim said…
Why did the SNP lose the referendum?

well. at least IMHO, its not due to the fact HWSNBN moved the goal posts and without any mandate offered a better "NO" deal. its more to do with the fact that for all the passion to leave there was amongst the scots, there was never a clear exit plan showing how do it, and the steps needed to acheive it. There was never a clear strategy to leave, let alone one that showed that would be a low risk move.

The lack of a clear exit plan, showing how to mitigate the risk is vital in the eyes of a very risk averse population, that was the SNP's problem.

Its not enough to say "we are now hear, but its hear we want to be"

you have to state why you want to be there, draw a road map, and show that the route is safe to travel as well.

oh... and when you look at vote leave and Leave.EU you may see a little bit of history repeating.

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