IN my book In Place of Failure, I examine the claims made against independence and identify why the Yes side did not successfully contest and rebut a number of them. Yesterday I argued that the first step in preparing for the next referendum should be the creation of a National Yes campaign body which is not under the control of any one party. Today I want to analyse one of the biggest lies the No campaign produced: Scotland benefits from the UK financial system.

‘OUT of self-respect comes self-confidence, and out of that comes imagination, innovation, and the whole world opens up to us with independence.” Those were the inspiring words of Margo MacDonald.

Compare that uplifting message – with its vision of new horizons, new opportunities, of breaking free from old narrow boundaries – with the present state of Scots today, back where we have always been, paying the price of failure.

With the referendum lost, we face a debilitating dose of austerity administered by a government that we didn’t vote for and comprehensively rejected. If we are to move from the dismal situation, then independence isn’t a dream that will never die; it is something that we must make a reality as soon as possible, and not in a generation from now.

UK banks and big business weighed in against the Yes side during the referendum. The RBS announcement that it was re-registering its head office in London was conveyed by a hostile media to mean it was closing its main operations in Scotland. If RBS were unaware of how this would be presented, then they take the biscuit for naivety. That announcement increased uncertainty and we can anticipate more of the same from the financial sector next time.

With this in mind, it is hard to fathom why anyone would regard the banks as sources of economic wisdom. The gloom they manufactured at the prospect of independence was more than matched by the hubris that gripped them as they engaged in one of the greatest lending sprees in history, and plunged the Western world into a deep recession.

These were the “lords of finance” and “titans of economics”, who were just plain idiotic. Lately, many have been found to be just plain criminal, fixing the Libor rate to make billions and the Foreign Exchange Market to repeat the fraud. Given the enormous scale of the damage they have done to millions of people through the frauds they have committed, a large number of them should be in jail rather than continuing to draw their bonuses.

That they should be deemed sources of wisdom on the constitutional question facing Scotland is utterly staggering.

It will be necessary next time for the Yes movement to tackle the banks.

They are vulnerable to people gaining knowledge, and wide open to attack given their recent history of criminality and incompetence.

In a world of fiat money, with central banks venturing into the unknown through Quantitative Easing – printing vast quantities of it electronically, that then sloshes around the world tempting madcap investment – how our banks conduct themselves becomes vital to maintaining economic stability. The present structures are unsafe. To be made safe for society, they need to be divided between “safe banks” and “risky banks”, with the former playing a sensible banker role in society, paying attention to retail responsibilities and assisting legitimate business to expand, leaving the latter in the casino fields where, if they fail, then they fail.

The bankers' record is not just poor, but abysmal. They have been proved to be engaged in crooked dealings, which are only matched by a startling level of incompetence.

Between now and the next referendum, the Yes movement has to decide whether an independent Scotland should place itself in a position where the banks can be irresponsible rogues at any time, or whether they are held to another discipline based on restructuring.

Next time we should be prepared not to retreat when the bankers come in on the side of Unionism, but to counter- attack with the truth about a tribe that deserves public doubt of every word they say; and face them with a policy that makes them the servant not the master of the economy.

We need to put the financiers on a hook and keep them there, by setting up a series of debates with financial CEOs facing up to serious scrutiny at the hands of Yes specialists, of whom we have plenty. If broadcasters will not co-operate then we have enough technical skill in our movement to ensure a very large audience, via alternative media.

Next time, as last time, the Yes campaign will face the claims of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), telling us how independence will beggar the country.

They will be given great prominence in the Unionist media; we must take those claims with a bucket of salt.

The OBR is a UK Government organisation, set up by the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011. Three members of its lead committee are appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. At present they are Robert Chote, chairman, former director of the IFS; Stephen Nickell CBE, member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee for six years; and Graham Parker CBE, a former Treasury official. Its Oversight Board is those three plus Lord Burns, former Permanent Sectary at the Treasury for seven years; and Dame Kate Barker CBE, a former member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee for nine years, and formerly Chief Economic Adviser to the CBI. There is an Advisory Panel on which people from the Bank of England, academia and other bodies sit. Not exactly free from entanglement with the government and the metropolitan financial establishment.

Those intimate links to the UK Government should make Scots cautious about accepting OBR forecasting the consequences of independence. It is hardly an independent body given that it is funded by the Treasury, appointed by the Chancellor, and can be dismissed by him with the agreement of the Treasury Select Committee.

Between now and next time, we have to expose the OBR to Scots as a deeply flawed, UK Government organisation we should ignore.

The IFS describes itself as “an independent research institute” and has been described by the Daily Telegraph as the “most respected economic forecaster” and by The Guardian as a “respected think tank”. So right across the political spectrum we have adulation.

We Scots, as with the OBR, should again be more sceptical in accepting the IFS at its self-proclaimed face value. When it comes to slicing and dicing a Westminster budget, the IFS will be objective. When, however, as part of the UK Establishment, whether it is willing to admit it or not, it is on the Unionist side on the issue of Scottish independence.

“Scotland’s deficit higher in first year of independence than UK’s, says IFS” was a good example of the newspaper headlines on June 4 2014, reporting a study timed nicely for the referendum and Unionist propaganda. One newspaper reported that the IFS based its analysis on, yes, you’ve guessed it, OBR data. A nice nexus of Establishment interest.

The IFS, as part of the Metropolitan elite, is about as neutral on Scottish independence as the Duke of Buccleuch. It may be a think tank, but it doesn’t think deep enough, or fully understand the alternatives to what it measures, and comments upon, which is a Unionist Scotland as a North British bit of the UK economy.

We should be less solicitous next time with the IFS and others like it. Any outfit which takes as valid data from the OBR should have its opinion treated with great scepticism.

What Yes did not successfully get across was the idea that independence does not mean creating a mini UK, but a completely different Scottish state, with economic structures and moral principles aimed at correcting the gross inequalities that now define us to our lasting shame. We must escape the economic patterns of the Union, not repeat them.

In Place Of Failure: Making It Yes Next Time ... Soon is published today by Vagabond Voices, priced £7.95 www.inplaceoffailure.scot