The National:

A LIST published by the UK Government explaining all the ways Scots could spend the supposed “dividend” from remaining in the Union has aged like milk.

Written in 2014 ahead of the independence referendum, “analysis” published by LibDem Danny Alexander – who was chief secretary to the Treasury during his party’s coalition with the Tories – claimed every Scot would get £1400 a year thanks to the Union.

The claim was widely panned at the time, with Patrick Dunleavy, the politics professor at the London School of Economics whose analysis underpinned the Treasury’s case, telling the Financial Times the UK Government had manipulated his research to suit its aims.

And a Channel 4 fact check found there were “too many unknown quantities to make a definitive prediction”.

The National: Danny Alexander fired a warning at the Scottish Government

Ignoring all that, in a speech at the launch of the analysis, Alexander (above) claimed the UK dividend “is worth £1400 for each person in Scotland each year for the next 20 years”.

With a cost of living crisis about to really bite, and residents of the UK being forced to suffer the worst fall in living standards since records began, Alexander may wish to revise that timescale.

But it was far from the oddest claim put forward by the UK Government at the time.

Originally published by Buzzfeed (after being written by the UK Government’s “YouDecide2014” campaign group), a list of 12 things that £1400 could buy you has not aged well at all.

Among the ridiculous attempts to be relatable, the No side claimed the UK dividend could buy “280 hotdogs at the Edinburgh Festival”, “watch Aberdeen play all season with two mates – with a few pies and Bovrils thrown in”, or “a meal of fish and chips with your family every day for around 10 weeks, with a couple of portions of mushy peas”.

It also suggested you could get a haircut every month for three and a half years.

But away from the promises of fast food and short hair, the UK Government made some further claims they will probably be hoping we’ve all forgotten about.

One of those was that £1400 would be enough to “pay off your energy bills in full” for one year. While that is already untrue for people across much of Scotland, a steep rise in the energy price cap (54%) seems about to make it untrue for just about everybody.

READ MORE: SNP demand urgent reform as report shows Scotland hardest hit by energy bill rises

Another claim was that the UK dividend could be used to “fill up your fuel tank for the whole year with money left over”. With prices at the pumps reaching new record highs in recent weeks – and a paltry 5p fuel duty cut being put forward by the Tories to soften the blow – that doesn’t seem likely to be true for much longer.

That’s not to say that the question of truth ever held the No side back.

That idea of a “UK dividend” has since been rebranded as the “Union dividend” under Boris Johnson.

The label has become a little more flexible though, being slapped on everything from the extra funding needed to host Cop26 in Glasgow to the tax rise foisted on workers through the National Insurance hike.