I agree with you that their social democratic policies ares admirable and represents what a Labour Government should be doing rather than denigrating across the whole of the UK, but you can't do jack if nobody believes you on the economy. keep to the Fen Causeway
On the other hand, a coordinated European response would likely have strengthened the Nats case, but we can only see the world as it is, not how it would have been. So we'll never know. However, a key question becomes whether the extended response is at the national level. Or if there is a European response as this thing drags on?
And as for the models of small nations making their own way, Salmond seems particularly taken with Norway. It's not just the oil. It the idea of a green energy export to the rest of the UK. Scotland has a lot of green power potential. The rest of the UK isn't so great.
Wave power in Wales. A bit of wind in Northern Ireland, and offshore in waters controlled by the Crown Estate. But nothing like the potential of Scotland. And Scotland has a much higher per capita potential, meaning that export for profit becomes a strong possibility. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
It's one of those things where I don't think you can have a halfway house. As much as you try to preserve national autonomy, it necessarily fractures if you try to make the guarantee workable. You can either have the current situation where national treasuries guarantee the banks, leaving small economies vulnerable, or you move to a situation where the ECB must centrally legislate how banks relate for its own self-protection. And that's a real can of worms.
Personally I'm in favour of it, but I cannot see too many governments voting for Christmas on that one. keep to the Fen Causeway
The local MSP in particular made the point that it was a sign of the SNP's advance that they actually had an expectation that they would win a rock solid Labour seat.
Salmond is of course a former RBS oil economist and is as steeped in the conventional wisdom as it was possible to be. The fall of the Celtic tiger model must have him questioning his assumptions at the moment in exactly the same way that the Iranian "reformists" are now having to think of a "Plan B".
Swinney is cut from a different cloth to Salmond, I think, and appears to approach things more from the more "mutualist" end of the spectrum, which is where solveig - since long before I met her - has long been working to develop the historic cultural and economic links between Scotland and Norway.
These links are in particular based upon hundreds of years of common heritage and the necessity for mutuality and cooperation in the face of a pretty adverse climate.
Swinney semed genuinely interested in our brief "elevator pitch" as was a bright young spark of an SNP MSP we also talked to. We'll have to see what he makes of
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