Scottish referendum: in whom we trust

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/28/scottish-referendum-in-whom-we-trust

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The most important question for voters in Scotland's independence referendum may be whether or not they believe independence will leave them better off. It is also the hardest one to answer definitively. As Shakespeare warned, predicting which grain will grow is an uncertain business. Not that anyone would have guessed that from Wednesday's confident forecasting, which came first from the Scottish government and then from the Treasury. The noisy argument that followed was an indicator of the perils of uncertainty. In the end, it may be that voters choose to believe the argument that supports their prejudices, rather than making up their minds according to the financial prognosis.

The SNP's paper, Opportunities for Independence, reckons that within 15 years of independence, a dividend of £5bn a year could be achieved – the equivalent of about £1,000 a head. It would come from higher revenues produced by a 0.3% increase in productivity above the UK forecast, a growing population and a 3.3% higher employment rate. Pulling all that off would put Scotland on a par with the strongest performers in the OECD. The numbers also assume a generous settlement to the contentious question of the appropriate share of the UK national debt, and a more gradual taper in oil revenues than many people expect.

The Treasury chief secretary Danny Alexander – struggling against the background of Lib Dem internal woes and a parting shot from his one time colleague Lord Oakeshott, a poll showing he's set to lose his Westminster seat at the next election – made the case for a bigger unity dividend of £1,400 a year for every person in the country, based on the advantages of the UK's larger tax base, lower interest rates and a smoother transition to the post-oil world. But the Treasury paper unwisely included £1.5bn for the start-up costs of an independent Scotland's new institutional infrastructure, derived from an old study of the cost of setting up Whitehall ministries. Scotland would need new bodies but, as Mr Salmond forcefully argued, they would not all be on a par with UK-wide departments.

The financial question is likely to be the biggest single issue in the remaining four months of the campaign. But the result of last week's EU vote dealt an unexpected blow to one symbolic SNP claim, that Scotland is a social democratic country where rightwing UK nationalism could not get a purchase. In fact, Ukip won a seat, polling around 10% – much less than the 27% it won across the rest of Britain, but enough to suggest that a significant minority of Scottish voters share the south's concerns about Europe and immigration. SNP analysts may feel anxious, too, that although the party "won" the vote, it did less well than polls predicted. Forecasting is indeed a fraught affair.