Here's my latest column for the Caledonian Mercury - observing the shift towards the economics of independence as the SNP campaign message coming up to the Holyrood elections this coming May. And wondering whether the race for "growth" is the most credible campaigning issue
THERE has been the usual soul-shrivelling yah-boo around the SNP's postponement of its independence referendum. Salmond tarring the "Unionist" parties as anti-democratic wreckers, Iain Gray minting one liners like "from flagship policy to white-flag". And for many of those citizens still listening, probably a pox on all houses.
But for those of us who profess a secular and progressive interest in independence, it's still worth unearthing some of the policy keywords that are already poking out of the stramash. And one of them is "growth".
"We've got part of the answer to facing up to this public spending crisis", said Salmond the other day, "and that answer is to get the financial powers into this parliament in order to deal with generating more growth, more revenue, and getting things done". Looking back on the 2009 National Conversation documents around fiscal autonomy - which still seem excessively generous in their Socratic inclusion of almost every other fiscal option - the SNP have a few core arguments about the connection between growth and independence.
One is based on appropriateness. Taxation and spending could be targeted to Scottish priorities. Say, a green tech sector exploiting our natural renewable resources, rather than nuclear power. Or the accelerated inclusion of Scotland's post-industrial poor in the social and economic mainstream, rather than just managing and policing them.
There's a fuzzier argument about efficiency: somehow, just by possessing full responsibility for tax-raising and expenditure, ministers will make more growth-oriented decisions about the economy. I saw a recent intervention from the economist on Andrew Hughes-Hallett on this, where he noted that
Navarra and the Basque country in Spain have fiscal responsibility; the other regions do not. Unemployment, although rising, is now only half that elsewhere in Spain. Income per head is higher than the Spanish average: 29.3 per cent higher (Navarra) and 34.2 per cent higher (Basques). Nothing has changed in the intervening 14 years except the fiscal responsibility which those regions have achieved
Yet how, exactly, did this come about? In another document, Hallett admits the research show an "ambiguous relationship between fiscal decentralisation and improved economic growth". Both Hallett and the Conversation paper see the ability to vary corporation tax rates as crucial to growth: Hallett notes that every time they've been lowered at the UK level, tax revenues have gone up.
So with the memory of Alex's previous pre-Crash embrace of "financial innovation" fading fast, expect to hear him and his front bench unleash the "open-to-business" Celtic Lion again, in the coming election rhetoric.
But is economic "growth" such an obvious target for independence? It depends on how we're defining growth itself. The weekend also saw a leaked report from the Scottish government's environmental commission, which promised what was described as an "all-out war" on car usage, on the way to meeting their own 42% carbon reduction targets by 2040.
Amidst the Jeremy-Clarkson-enraging measures, the glimmer of a different, low-carbon Scottish lifestyle emerges. A country where individuals rebuild their local ties through car-pooling; where bicycling increases in our cities from the current 2% to the 22% and more occuring in major European capitals; and where health costs decrease due to rising levels of overall fitness.
The independistas and fiscal autonomists say this kind of aspiration requires new Holyrood powers of social investment to get us there - particularly if we want a public transport system adequate and integrated enough to serve our mobility needs.
But it seems to me there are two clashing visions here of how an autonomous Scottish economy should be managed. One that believes we need low-tax regimes to let native, Hayek-style catallaxies of enterprise bubble up from below, generally heedless of their polluting impact (as I said in last week's column, it's not as if Scotland isn't already replete with companies enabling everything from Arctic oil drilling to Chinese nuclear reactors).
The other vision is confident about regulating markets and social activity to contribute to the planetary bottom-line. But its advocates can never seem to make the tangible and meaningful benefits of a sustainable livelihood shine through all the regulation and micro-level behaviour-changing.
So how do we connect entrepreneurial vigour and environmental responsibility in Scotland? How do we ensure that fiscal autonomy doesn't just unleash our latent merchant class, but guides their animal spirits to sustainable ends?
I was talking with a headhunter friend the other day, who deals regularly with venture capitalists, angel investors and start-ups in Scotland. Yes, he confirmed, "these are all go-getting, thrusting guys" (note the gender) "who want to blast their way into the marketplace. But I'm not sure whether the carbon-impact of what they're doing is uppermost in their minds".
You can't say that the SNP administration hasn't tried, within its powers, to forge the culture of that green enterprise economy. But as the Boston academic Juliet Schor says in her brilliant new book on sustainable economics, Plenitude, we can't just rely on hi-tech fixes to square the circle on growth and sustainablity: lifestyle changes will be needed.
One of her arguments (very much shaped by US values and norms) is that we need to change our vocabulary about "wealth". If we complex, desire-driven humans want abundance, could we come to regard time, community and personal creativity as our sources of "plenitude", rather than buy-'em-and-chuck-'em consumer goods? And what are the enterprise possibilities for the kinds of localised production that would open up if we took some daring steps on, say, our working week?
As they're saying about Obama at the moment in the US podcasts, "he's tried policy, now he's going to try politics" as he comes up to his own electoral test. So it's at least invigorating to hear that the economics of independence, rather than their competence as managers of devolution, will be at the core of the SNP campaign for the next Holyrood elections. But I wonder whether the debate will raise above the parameters of what Schor calls the "business-as-usual" economy.