Quote Originally Posted by Mason89 View Post
Still better than what's on offer just now imo.
This is an interesting point. If we became independent then as a country we would need to face up to the responsibility of governing as a nation. Most countries around the world (democratic countries) have a right wing party and a left wing party. People said that in Scotland no one would vote Tory, but in the past few years their support has gone from mid-****s or below to now over 25%. At the last Scottish elections they stood at around 20% (before the last election no one believed they would become the second largest party in Holyrood). The more there is talk of independence, the more their support goes up. If we were independent and the Tories were not perceived as an English party but a truly "independent" Scottish party then I cannot see how this level of support would not go up even further. The polls on people's views on most subjects show that the Scottish and English people's views are pretty similar. So here is the crazy thought for today. With independence, I believe we would end up with a Tory Government in Scotland.

Why would we get a Tory Government in Scotland?

Putting aside the politics for a minute. We are currently running a deficit of over $14bn or 9% of GDP. If we were independent then we would need to borrow a lot of cash per year (something we cannot do if we want to join the EU as the rules require much lower deficits than that), increase taxes substantially (sturgeon already said that if she did that then business would move to England - in fact post independence sturgeon was going to reduce corporation taxes) or reduce public services dramatically. So in an independent Scotland if we take Sturgeon at her word and abide by EU regulations we would need to cut public spending. To put this another way, in order to balance the books (everything remaining as it is today) we would need to cut a fifth off of all public sector spending - that is without any businesses moving out of Scotland due to independence and Scotland being able to keep the pound etc. You could say that we would attract a lot more companies to Scotland post independence but the reality is that this takes years or decades to achieve, businesses would need to see stable government and public finances. The reality is we have not been very successful at attracting new well paid jobs to Scotland over the past couple decades.

The reality is that the SNP Government would probably borrow more than is allowed to under the EU rules, raise taxes and reduce spending in some sort of fudge. However, this would still cause support for the SNP to fall and the Tories would ultimately see the benefit and be able to govern in some sort of coalition with Labour and/or the Lib Dems (or run a minority Government) in the next 2 to 3 election cycles. So get independence to stop the tories ruling over us from Westminster only to get the tories ruling over us from Holyrood.

You could say this is fantasy stuff, but it really does not take a genius to realise that the SNP will not hold power forever post independence. Now, what would be the first thing a Tory government do in Scotland post election?