Long-term view? No, we’ll just take a look out of the window…

By Graham Grant

HERE’s a cheap and easy method of putting your mind at rest if you’re worried about the economy – look out the window.

For small business owners hammered by sky-high rates, or workers suffering cold sweats over an income tax hike, it could be just the ticket.

At least it seems to work for Nationalist economics guru Andrew Wilson, who says when he peers out of his Edinburgh window, he sees cranes.

That suggests the city is thriving, he contends, and should put paid to some rather worrying warnings about the condition of the economy from a senior academic.

Most professors are irritants for the SNP, as they tend to muddy the debate with facts – and that’s what Colin Anthony Jones at Heriot-Watt University did at the weekend.

He pointed out that uncertainty over the possibility of a second Scottish independence referendum has ‘wreaked dramatic change’, and put the brakes on economic expansion.

The commercial property industry contributes around £6billion to Scotland’s economy and 60,000 jobs, but Professor Jones said that expenditure in Scotland by UK financial institutions plummeted to only 2.1 per cent in 2016 – down from 6.8 per cent in 2014. It was 2.9 per cent in 2015.

He warned that Scotland is in danger of being left behind, like Quebec after two unsuccessful bids in 1980 and 1995 by the French-speaking province for secession from Canada.

Commenting on the professor’s findings, former SNP MSP Mr Wilson, who masterminded the party’s Growth Commission report – setting out a blueprint for the economy of an independent Scotland – tweeted: ‘Keen to see the evidence for this as it is completely at odds with what we can see right now with more cranes active in Edinburgh than I can recall.

‘Also Barclays planning largest FS [financial services] investment in years. Is there a paper or something he [Professor Jones] has published?

Yet according to RBS – Mr Wilson’s former employer – job creation has slowed to a fractional pace while business confidence remains ‘historically weak’.

Mind you, Nationalists have form for this kind of response to criticism – in 2013, Alex Salmond, then First Minister, was accused of attempting to pressure the principal of St Andrews University, Professor Louise Richardson, into toning down warnings she had made about the adverse impact of Scottish independence.

Continuing his critique online, Mr Wilson said he spoke to businesses and investors ‘every day of my professional life’, and none had mentioned ‘neverendum’.

‘Nor has any analyst of the Scottish economy heard this that I know,’ he added. ‘Interested to hear the Professor’s evidence. Odd intervention’.

It’s surprising that in his first tweet, Mr Wilson didn’t challenge the use of the word ‘neverendum’, which you might have thought he would see as a toxic coinage.

That is because it’s undeniable that we are hovering on the edge of constitutional turmoil, owing to Nicola Sturgeon’s refusal to acknowledge the failure of the Nationalist project’s core objective back in 2014.

The uncertainty around the Canadian ‘neverendum’ had a chilling effect on Montreal’s status as a corporate hub, with 30 companies, including the Bank of Montreal, moving their headquarters from Montreal to Toronto between 1978 and 1981.

The number of Canada’s top 500 companies by revenue with their head offices in Montreal fell from 96 to 75 between 1990 and 2011.

‘Neverendums’ are bad for business, and in Scotland – combined with a package of high-tax policies that militate against entrepreneurialism – it’s easy to see that uncertainty can stoke economic paralysis.

Holyrood’s Public Finance Minister Kate Forbes also challenged Professor Jones’ assessment – claiming that the ‘facts tell quite a different story’.

She said that in the run-up to the 2014 referendum, the Scottish economy ‘grew by 1.9 per cent and foreign direct investment increased, cementing Scotland’s position as the UK’s most attractive place to invest outside London’.

Perhaps she, and indeed Mr Wilson, should get out more: I was contacted by a business owner, whose firm employs more than 250 people, who told me the SNP’s tax policies were ‘already impacting’ on recruitment, while clients were ‘investing south of the Border for similar reasons’.

Granted, this is more of an indictment of the taxation strategy of the SNP – but would the raid on our pay packets have been necessary if economic growth had been greater, or hadn’t been stunted by ‘neverendum’?

Doubtless Mr Wilson would dismiss the argument that without the threat of ‘indyref2’ there would be even more cranes around outside his window.

But in all probability he would be happy to argue that Scottish independence would generate a potentially limitless dividend for the economy.

Billions of pounds have been held back by businesses as a result of the Brexit stalemate; should the dam burst, firms hitherto fearful of taking on more staff, or starting new projects, will forge ahead with delayed plans.

They are rightly apprehensive about what lies ahead, not least the possibility of another referendum on EU membership.

But the blame for this damaging stasis lies squarely with the MPs who failed to back Theresa May’s deal.

The SNP is wrong to pin the blame for our negligible economic growth on Brexit: the UK Government’s failure to enact Brexit is indeed a factor, but the lingering threat of another poll on splitting apart Britain is a more powerful disincentive for growth.

Business abhors uncertainty above all else, and if it were removed the gains could be immense; but as long as that roadblock stays in place, corporate inertia will deepen, and the economy will grind ever-closer to the nightmare prospect of another recession.

Even independence supporters can see that the constant focus on another referendum is counterproductive.

Back in April, a property tycoon who was a leading member of Mr Wilson’s Growth Commission warned that the party’s currency debate was ‘almost irrelevant’.

Dan Macdonald said there was a ‘hell of a lot to be sorted out before we set policy’ on the currency of an independent Scotland – which would ultimately entail ditching the pound.

And yet we have a government whose business acumen was amply demonstrated by the depressing saga over Prestwick Airport, now on the market after ministers bought it for £1 in 2013 – after which it had to be propped up with almost £40million worth of taxpayers’ cash.

It’s worth remembering that Miss Sturgeon had described the airport as a ‘viable enterprise’ – when in fact even Del Boy Trotter would have pegged it early on as something of a white elephant.

So our economic future lies in the hands of a man who counts cranes to gauge prosperity, and a woman who makes Gerald Ratner look like Bill Gates.

‘Neverendum’ will continue to be the darkest of rainclouds for Scottish businesses, until Miss Sturgeon accepts the reality that her dream of tearing up the UK is dead – and has been for five years.

*This column appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail on July 16, 2019.