Believe in Scotland in the UK

The SNP’s latest gimmick seems to be an old gimmick, a very old and discredited one.

[INSERT COUNTRY] is independent. If Scotland were independent, we would be like [INSERT COUNTRY].

The selected countries have been far and wide over the years. Iceland, until the collapse, Ireland similarly until their financial crisis (but that seems to be back again), even New Zealand. Furthermore, the Growth Commission also shoved in Hong Kong and Singapore.

More recently, Denmark is getting a heavy push from Lesley Riddoch.

This has all been ridiculed, even by their own side. Mark Blyth, a recent convert to Scottish Independence, specifically called out this sort of road to nowhere.

“What we’ve got is ‘Denmark is awesome, we should be like Denmark! … no, you wouldn’t be Denmark, Denmark took 600 years to become Denmark.’”

As Blyth says, the point about independence is to recognise where you are right now, state where you want to be, and set out how doing X, Y, and Z will take you to that better place.

Independence in itself is not a correlating factor with these economies. They are not the economies they are because they are independent. They are the way they are because they have evolved over hundreds of years into this position. 

Changing the location of the government is not going to suddenly change Scotland’s wealth overnight (although it will technically make us instantly poorer), it’s not going to change our appalling birth rate and our horrific demographics, it’s not going to change our “resources” (which suddenly seems to have found a place as a self-convincing argument in itself for nationalists), nor is it likely to produce “better” decisions for Scotland that will make us wealthier, unless we suddenly believe that Scots are genetically better at running a government than people who live in rUK.

The case is about as convincing as arguing that if I were to divorce my family, I would be single. 

Michael B. Jordan is single. 

If I got divorced, I would be as attractive as Michael B. Jordan. 

Honestly, there are no amount of ‘levers’ that can get me there!

Scotland in the UK 

But you can show just how shallow the case is by reversing the analysis. Why not look at Scotland as part of the UK in comparison to other territories within other states (I’m deliberately resisting the use of the word country here). Helpfully, we’ve got lots of data to explore with the Eurostat NUTS2 territorial data. I’ve looked at the 2021 data as it’s the most comprehensive. This shows data for EU countries broken down BELOW the member state level.

NUTS2 level data shows us economic activity throughout the EU rather than being dwarfed by the economic centre. It’s arguably a far better comparison for Scotland. For example, take Ireland. GDP per capita in the Eastern and Midland territory was E229,934, in Northern & Western territory (the closest to Scotland) it was E28,707 per capita.

So when the case is made ‘we could be like Ireland’, the answer can equally be ‘which part’, the massively skewed wealth of the tax haven 'Eastern & Midland' part or the part closest to us?

When you look at the EU in this way, the position of Scotland shifts, and shifts quite dramatically.

I obtained 275 datapoints, excluding those that didn’t publish their GDP figures (they're set out below). 

The average GDP per capita in a NUTS2 territory was E28,050, the median average was E27,245. The geometric mean was only E22,541. These are a helpful set of stats as they shows that the overall data is skewed by a few very large GDPs per capita, of which Luxembourg is the largest (E113,900) but the averages are broadly representative of much of European territory. 

So where does Scotland fit into this?

If you believe the nationalists, then we must be performing really poorly, after all, they keep coming up with economies that are better than us. 

Well, Scotland is E38,410 in terms of GDP per capita. That’s a full 37% ahead of the mean average and just shy of the top 25%. 

We’re placed 73 out of 275, miles ahead of the closest NUTS2 territory to us in Ireland (see above) and 50 places ahead of Catalonia.

Scotland isn’t just doing well in comparison with other territories in Europe; it’s way ahead of the pack.

So firstly, where is the problem? Yes, of course, Scotland COULD do better as a nationalist would want to argue, but anyone can make that case. We COULD do better in the UK as well. To be well above the average and to be just shy of the top 25% is not bad at all. Which leads me to my second question.

Why would independence and making Scotland poorer improve our relative position?

The ultimate question then is not ‘Why not Scotland’, but ‘Why not Scotland in the UK’?

As a wise man once said, the floor is yours.