THE grimly pragmatic, world-weary CIA analyst Gust Avrakotos, as imagined by Aaron Sorkin, and played in the film Charlie Wilson’s War by Philip Seymour Hoffman, little by little tells the story of the boy and the Zen master. In every iteration, after something dramatic happened in the boy’s life, the Zen master repeatedly took the long view, simply commenting, “We’ll see.”
Over the last 15 years, the Zen master would have deployed his universal comment in the face of the financial crisis, the imposition of austerity, the Scottish independence referendum, the Brexit referendum, the Brexit deal, the Covid pandemic, and, now, the war in Ukraine.
Almost every other year seems to bring something unprecedented. But instead of waiting and seeing, our leaders press on with unfounded confidence. Against that backdrop of permanent change, the First Minister’s seeming reticence about committing to a second independence referendum has its admirable qualities. “So, Scotland voted for independence. And everyone said, ‘That’s good!’ But the old Zen master, now a New Scot, said, ‘Aye, right’.”
The first comment on my article last week made the point that the Brexiteers had lied to win. Indeed, plausible stories will, all too often, win in political contests. Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, and possibly still, Marine Le Pen, have shown that. The populist trick is to claim to be on the side of the people, finding easy solutions, which usually involve blaming someone else. Perhaps foreigners, perhaps a powerful but venal elite. But someone, allowing voters to be whipped up into an often self-delusive anger.
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So, yes, we could lie our way to independence. The only problem is the lies will then catch up with us. If we blithely claim that after independence, everything will be perfect, then Scotland’s First Minister will end up making incompetent, shambling, barely coherent Boris Johnson look like the leader of the free world.
The morning after Scotland votes to be independent, I will probably come down to my kitchen to make myself some coffee, and think that the sky is bluer, the sun brighter, the birdsong cheerier. But if I drop my coffee mug on the floor, the liquid will still spill everywhere. My perceptions might have changed, but physical reality will have stayed the same. The great insight of the philosophically inclined political economists of the inter-war period, such as Keynes and Hayek, was that while there is a physical reality, we construct our social realities. The economy is not simply the means of production. Keynes argued that the fundamental cause of the Great Depression was a loss of confidence among businesses, along with governments’ failure to enable its return.
That ongoing failure to understand the value of government engendering confidence is the besetting economic sin of the Conservative Party. It was the Cameronian pursuit of austerity which alienated the public, enabling Brexit, and its continuing harm.
Now, we see our present Chancellor pushing up taxes and once again draining confidence from the economy. Ignore ministerial bluster, and expect another recession.
One challenge for the government of an independent Scotland will be recognise what is happening in the economy and to act decisively to ensure that widespread prosperity flows from confidence. This is challenging to do.
FOR example, some people assert that after independence, Scotland will succeed economically because of its natural resources. Not so. Were that the case, Russia would be the global economic superpower, and China only the junior partner in their alliance.
Instead of being primarily resource-dependent, modern economies are built on trust, co-operation, and knowledge. After independence, Scotland’s critical resources will continue to be its people.
As will time. Gust Avrakotos did not tell the story of the Zen master because of his fatalist tendency to passivity. Permanently angry, he focused on sweeping aside obstacles which might prevent him from ensuring the Afghans expelled the Russian army. In that, he succeeded. It was then not possible for him, by continued force of will, to ensure that the country would remain peaceful.
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If there is a referendum in 2023, and the question is, once again, “should Scotland be an independent country?”, answering “yes” should not imply any urgency.
The Scottish Government’s prospectus will presumably have an action plan. It should draw on the experience of Brexit, shot through with valuable lessons on the importance of never rushing; and acting only with forethought and preparation.
And never mind “taking back control”. No matter how implausible it might be to imagine the Brexiteers as rebels, at least the Scottish Government will be very much in control of the Scottish end of the whole process. When there is a strategy, it may well involve a few years of preparation for the referendum, and then several years of transition to independence, The absence of decisive action suggests that a referendum in 2023 is unlikely. There is, though, a developing economic transformation strategy, which appears to be aimed at increasing the resilience of Scotland’s economy so that it can easily navigate the shock of becoming independent.
Yet that strategy is also entirely consistent with Scotland remaining a part of the United Kingdom. It works entirely within the powers of the devolved government. That perhaps-necessary framing ties the government to looking for private-sector partners for development, rather than itself acting decisively, and taking a leading role in directing Scotland’s economic transformation.
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