Scotland and the EU

In 1997 HM Treasury asked the question "in summary will joining the EMU promote higher growth, stability and a lasting increase in jobs?" and answered "no". In 2003 it asked the same question again and on this occasion answered "yes but only if sustainable and durable convergence between business cycles and economic structures was achieved and that had not yet been achieved".

The Economist magazine considered the same question in 2002 and came to the conclusion "no". I cannot find anyone purporting to do an economic analysis between 1997 and the present day who has answered the Treasury question as an unequivocal and unconditional "yes".

I do not think that any Soviet leader after Stalin was unaware of the economic failings of his country due to an inability to model those failings. The position with Stalin was somewhat different, but executing people who bring you bad news tends to distort statistical results.

In 1912 Thomas Andrews accurately modelled the effect of the collision of a large passenger liner with an iceberg. What good did it do?

You think that it is devastating for the EU that an EU member not very typical of the UK underperformed a non-EU microstate utterly untypical of any EU state other than (at a considerable stretch given its lack of seaboard) Luxembourg?

That is not the question I asked.

You know and I know that HM Treasury will have returned the answer desired by Tony Blair for political reasons. I am not disputing that there was substantial public opposition to Euro membership which made joining the Euro politically dangerous, and ultimately resulted in our not adopting the Euro. In particular Blair had promised a referendum that he would lose and therefore did not want to hold.

I am disputing that the apparently independent experts now being cited by Remain, and apparently spontaneously endorsing Remain, stated that Euro membership would be bad for Britain.


Here is The Economist in 1999: http://www.economist.com/node/199382



This looks exactly the same as what we see now: a large majority in favour of the Euro, which gets larger with more relevant specialism, with an eclectic opposition of extreme free marketeers and Marxists.

The article actually gives a pretty nice summary of the objections to the Euro, and foreshadows the devastation it caused in the crisis, but the message is clear: academic consensus is to join, and refuseniks are disproportionately crackpots.


I am not suggesting they were unaware of the current effects of past policies (they often were but not for this reason). I am suggesting that they planned their economy - made decisions - on the basis of supposedly predictive mathematical models, and that those decisions tended to be poor. Economies run in this way were only really able to copy established practices from free market economies. As Khrushchev said, "When all the world is socialist, Switzerland will have to remain capitalist, so that it can tell us the price of everything.".


Yes. The objections you are making are superficial and irrelevant and I suggest you have not logically explained their relevance for that reason. You have said that the UK would have to adopt pretty much the same policies whether inside or outside the EU. If it is obvious that Singapore has and can have radically different policies to Portugal, which result in its radically different performance, then you have conceded on that point.

The fact that Singapore is a small state (it's not a microstate, more populous than Scotland or Ireland) and otherwise untypical of the EU and the UK makes my position stronger, because Singapore differs from the UK and the EU in lacking precisely those things - scale and power - which it is argued the EU is valuable in providing. The things that make Singapore atypical should harm its performance.

This has got lost in the noise. Anyone who is offering economic modelling is coming down firmly against Brexit.

You have got various people offering different views on the political future, but you might as well look in a crystal ball because the external variables are vastly more significant than whether we stay or go. Both sides are playing this game and both sides are vastly overplaying the political risks.

You then have a few economists who are basically wishing to change the economy, usually, but not exclusively, in a radically deregulated direction who see Brexit as an opportunity to do so. If you are a revolutionary, wanting to remodel society, you need some kind of discontinuance in the established order and Brexit is more likely than an armed uprising in Goldalming.

But every economic forecaster, extrapolating from the present and crunching the numbers says we will be significantly poorer if we leave.

You are still looking at a theoretical model of sovereignty.

To all intents and purposes the EU has banned capital punishment in America and the United States has banned the original Land Rover. The EU has introduced VAT in West Virginia and the United States has outlawed non-electronic passports in the rest of the world.

Globalisation diminishes sovereignty. If the EU bans a food additive after Brexit, that food additive will disappear from the UK market regardless of public opinion unless Parliament decides to create a siege economy about that item by requiring (not merely permitting) its use and subsidising its production.

This is really Cameron's one and only victory in his re-negotiation. "Ever closer union" isn't an issue at the political level in the EU Council but it is significant at the administrative level in the Commission and more so at the judicial level. Stopping a single direction of travel in EU decision-making will have an effect.

Everyone in the economy is both a giver (either by directly providing services or by paying taxes) and a receiver of services and the present state of the economy is the net result of all that giving and all that receiving. Each individual person in the economy doesn't contribute equally at any moment in time or indeed over a lifetime.

If we suddenly add a lot more economically active, working age people in good health for whose childhood we have not had to pay to the economy, it is ridiculous to say that this will add a net burden to the economy. If that was the case, the UK should have been encouraging economically active, working age Brits in good health to emigrate, because it would have made those of us who stayed richer.

I think less since the Scottish elections. If the SNP had done better, Nicola would have used a Brexit vote opportunistically to lobby for another referendum.

However, with SNP support past its peak and the Tories playing a more explicitly Unionist card than did Labour, it is a dangerous game.

Independence is inherently more risky for Scotland if there is Brexit, because then who is looking out for Edinburgh in any negotiations between London and Brussels/Paris/Berlin?

Frankly there is much more likelihood of a second Brexit referendum to overturn a vote to leave.

Scotland almost certainly wouldn't leave. You have to remember two things: first they're in a worse state fiscally than last time round; second that they aren't as europhilic as people make out making it a relatively minor issue.

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My point is what if it's not clearly expressed, or can be arguably said to be not clearly expressed? Either way actually - I'm quite sure if it's 55:45 to Remain or something like that (as seems likely) that Farage, Gove, Boris and Duncan-Smirk will be back on the boil demanding another referendum about a week later.

Do we stand by these comments today?

Not them, but yeah.
Opinion polling is showing the Scots don't really have an appetite for another referendum.

Do we stand by these comments today?

Hopefully, there is something that the UK can offer Scotland to keep the Union between them despite the Exit. I would be sad to see them go after centuries of being part of the UK. The countries in the EU aren't that close to each other culturally or historically.

It's a sad age we live in, when everyone is willing to sacrifice identity, history, and principles, for money and market access alone. Nothing is sacred anymore, I guess. Every nation and every person is seen as some kind of impersonal, generic, and interchangeable abstraction without historical context or significance. That's at least a part of what I hate about the EU and the kind of postmodern, post-structuralism it stands for.

Hopefully, there is something that the UK can offer Scotland to keep the Union between them despite the Exit. I would be sad to see them go after centuries of being part of the UK. The countries in the EU aren't that close to each other culturally or historically.

It's a sad age we live in, when everyone is willing to sacrifice identity, history, and principles, for money and market access alone. Nothing is sacred anymore, I guess. Every nation and every person is seen as some kind of impersonal, generic, and interchangeable abstraction without historical context or significance. That's at least a part of what I hate about the EU and the kind of postmodern, post-structuralism it stands for.

You teach me how to turn identity, history and principles into food on the table and provide a modest living and I'll concede the point.

The reality is that we need to survive in this world and we all vote in our best interests where that be remain or leave. The whole lets hold hands and support each other sentiment never gets very far.

Is leaving the EU going to cause you to resort to food banks?

You teach me how to turn identity, history and principles into food on the table and provide a modest living and I'll concede the point.

The reality is that we need to survive in this world and we all vote in our best interests where that be remain or leave. The whole lets hold hands and support each other sentiment never gets very far.

Do we stand by these comments today?





Which is much less honourable than demanding the government to simply ignore the result

Nothing is sacred anymore, I guess.

France and the Netherlands are thinking of voting out.

There has always been a problem with reporting "Europe" in the UK in which very fruitcake's view is awarded the same respect as a solemn decision of the European Council.

Today papers are reporting that English may disappear as an official language of the EU...because of the comments of one mayor in southern France.

Is there any evidence whatsoever that anyone's view of the EU in France or Holland has changed? The Euro was opposed by a majority of the French since its creation. How many elections have passed since then? Someone reports that such and such a percentage of people are opposed to "Europe". What was the figure 5 years ago...10 years ago...30 years ago?

There has always been a problem with reporting "Europe" in the UK in which very fruitcake's view is awarded the same respect as a solemn decision of the European Council.

Today papers are reporting that English may disappear as an official language of the EU...because of the comments of one mayor in southern France.

Is there any evidence whatsoever that anyone's view of the EU in France or Holland has changed? The Euro was opposed by a majority of the French since its creation. How many elections have passed since then? Someone reports that such and such a percentage of people are opposed to "Europe". What was the figure 5 years ago...10 years ago...30 years ago?

The views on the EU haven't really changed, it's more that we've shown it is possible to leave, the Netherlands are strong soft Eurosceptics and it's a pretty common view in France.