Former SNP adviser ‘demolishes’ economic case for independence

Professor Mark Blyth rejects comparison with Nordic countries and says Scotland risks becoming a ‘mini Argentina’

A former SNP government adviser has “demolished” the economic case for independence, it has been claimed after he scathingly dismissed a series of assertions made by senior nationalists.
Prof Mark Blyth, who formerly sat on the Scottish Government’s advisory council for economic transformation, said: “You can’t really say that Brexit is the worst thing ever, and then commit the biggest Brexit of all time. Which is literally what this is.”
The William R Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics at Brown University in the United States also lashed out at claims by the First Minister and others that a separate Scotland would emulate Nordic countries.
Speaking at a nationalist economics festival in Dundee at the weekend, he also warned that Scotland needed a robust economy to back up a new currency or face becoming a “mini Argentina”.
He said as a “small, open economy”, an independent Scotland would need to “balance your imports and exports over the long term or everyone thinks your currency’s s—”.
His intervention overshadowed the latest SNP government independence paper, this time on education, despite it being a policy area that is already devolved to Holyrood.
Liz Smith, the Scottish Tories’ shadow finance secretary, said: “This is a devastating demolition of the economic case for independence by a former adviser to the SNP Government.
“It’s an evisceration of the absurd and baseless reassurances from nationalists that tearing Scotland out of the UK would somehow be pain-free.”
Prof Blyth made his comments at an event organised by a pro-independence group called Scotonomics. The other speakers included Gillian Martin, the Scottish Energy Minister.
He said comparing Scotland’s economy to Nordic countries was like “saying I’m a supermodel because I also have legs, it’s simply not true when you really think about it”.
The renowned economist added: “You’re a periphery part of a small free trade zone called the United Kingdom. You have thousands of micro-enterprises that trade with each other and trade in the United Kingdom.
“You have hardly any international trade in comparison to actual, genuine small economies, you have no global champions at scale in the way that they do in Scandinavia and other places.”
SNP ministers have overseen Scotland tumbling down international school league tables for maths, reading and science over the past 17 years, with the latest assessments showing English pupils performing better.
But the Scottish Government’s new report argued that independence would allow ministers to “further improve” the education system and proposed free university tuition be included in a written constitution.
It said that an independent Scotland in the EU would mean students from the Continent would “once again enjoy the same access to higher education as Scottish students”. EU students also received free tuition before Brexit.
The SNP’s free tuition policy is only affordable by capping the number of “free” places for Scottish youngsters. There is no such cap for children from the rest of the UK as they pay fees.
Extending this right to EU students would mean there would be even greater competition for the fixed quota of “free” places, risking more Scots missing out.
Among the other uncosted policies in the paper were improving maternity and paternity leave durations and pay, and giving 16 and 17-year-olds the vote in all Scottish elections.
But the 34-page document, written by civil servants, contained barely a page on “school years” and no new proposals for major reform of the education system.
Unveiling the paper, Jenny Gilruth, the SNP Education Secretary, said: “As we have already set out, we would enshrine economic, social and cultural rights – including the right to education – in the interim constitution, effective from day one of independence.”
Craig Hoy, the Scottish Tory chairman, said: “The SNP should be fixing the mess they’ve made of Scotland’s education system now, rather than worrying about what it would be like in an independent Scotland.”