WE have just passed the 10th anniversary of the outbreak of a global financial crisis that is not over even yet. It started with the suspension of two hedge funds by the French bank, BNP Paribas. The epidemic quickly spread as other banks in other countries found that various sorts of security on which they ultimately based their business, like the notorious sub-prime mortgages, were worthless.

Soon the whole financial system seized up. For various purposes banks constantly lend to one another, but now they refused to do so because they could not be sure of getting repaid: they reached their own credit limits. For the UK, the first big victim was an overexposed building society, Northern Rock. Its members rushed to protect themselves in the only way open to them, by queuing up to withdraw their deposits.

Early on the economic crash changed the behaviour of the world’s governments too. Once upon a time they had been ready to let insolvent financial institutions go under, but no longer. They decided these institutions were now too big to fail and mounted rescues. One result was that instead of the politicians becoming masters of the bankers, the bankers became masters of the politicians. In the UK, for example, the politicians backed down when the bankers afterwards demanded there should be no changes to regulation which would in future stop them gambling with depositors’ funds just as they had done in the past. Their millions of pounds of personal bonuses would also be guaranteed, even in loss-making outfits. These would be besides the huge sums available to them under quantitative easing.

Yet none of this heralded a return to the old days when banks had been pillars of security and stability, or reliable providers of help and advice to their customers. The Scottish banking system, which had survived 300 years of Union, in effect collapsed and vanished, though a façade of independence was preserved in the network of local branches and in TV adverts. Fred the Shred got away scot-free, while his bank forced small businesses into bankruptcy so that it could flog off their assets. Cheap money and zero interest rates were of little avail while austerity ruled: punters were hardly likely to splurge if they might lose their jobs by Christmas.

Basically we are in the same position today, except it will soon be made worse by Brexit. With a falling pound, inflation will rise and so will interest rates. This must require a painful adjustment by all those who have relied for a decade on cheap money to keep going. Many governments, and certainly the UK Government, will seek a way forward in continuing to spend cash they haven’t got. Yet, in the circumstances, it will still feel like austerity.

In these last 10 years the original crisis has not only spread like a cancer through the financial system but also brought about unforeseen changes in the rest of society. A lost decade of stagnation has depressed the incomes of almost everybody (as should be noted by those progressive souls who think we can do without growth). The exceptions have been first the pensioners, sustained by the prudent habits of an earlier generation and by devices like the triple lock. But above all they have been the oligarchs, not only a mobile international elite who make their homes in the unregulated UK but plenty of our own opportunists too – speculators able to play even the worst of markets and then those who can milk the public purse for all it is worth, in everything from parliamentary expenses to swollen salaries for sinecures in the BBC.

Wealthy though these people have waxed, their personal prosperity is not enough to sustain any general economic recovery. The squeeze on incomes makes it much harder for ordinary citizens to provide for the future, and zero interest rates mean it is scarcely worth the trouble anyway. In the UK we now typically save only one per cent of our incomes. Today, as inflation begins to return, savers are actually penalised by official policy. If we do not have savings we are unlikely to get much investment, if we do not have investment we are unlikely to improve our productivity, if we do not improve productivity our living standards will remain depressed. One result of the great financial crisis has been to make the old British sickness much worse.

No wonder that social resentments, especially resentment of authority, have grown. Those who have so far survived a decade of crisis in reasonably good order are envied by those who have not. If we translate the stagnation of wages into human terms, we see they represent large numbers of people living in insecurity. It is worst of all for youngsters who find it hard to enter the workforce because their elders cling on to the available jobs. The losers in this situation then cannot set up homes of their own, and for the future are now being told they may never get a pension because the rising numbers of old folk will be beyond the ability of the British state to provide for.

Why should anybody continue to believe in this British state? It entertains ridiculous delusions about its standing in the world, delusions now being mercilessly exposed by the Brexit negotiations. After a brief Thatcherite boom, it has resumed the course of economic decline that set in after 1945, if not after 1918. Its old ruling class has lost the plot, and staggers from one blunder to another. Its once cherished public institutions, from the Parliament at Westminster to the National Health Service to the system of free and universal education, are in visible decay. All this, too, appears in a more unflattering light than ever as a result of our 10 years of financial crisis.

In other western countries the same sorts of difficulties have brought about political breakdown of one kind and another amid the rise of populism, or the revolt of the masses against the elites. In certain cases, such as France, the process is relatively benign, and in others, such as Poland, much less so. In the UK the old two-party system survives in battered shape, with one third of the electorate now voting for new parties. At least Ukip has been seen off, but it got its revenge in helping to build the majority for Brexit. It would never have been able to find the same range of resentments to exploit without the impact of the financial crisis on a powerless population.

Where have these 10 years left us in Scotland? Some outside pundits see the successive electoral victories of the SNP as part of the populist revolt, though it came to power at Holyrood before the great financial crisis broke on us. To the extent it has profited politically, it stands on the benign rather than the malign side. What strikes me rather is that it is as clueless as any other party about how to break through the present impasse. I mean not just the iffiness of a second referendum, and when to hold it, but what to do after it has been won. Constitutional ideas for a new Scotland are absent. Future economic policy is a mystery, which will not be dispelled by pretending no financial crisis ever happened. But when I survey the 10 years we have spent under mismanagement from Westminster and Whitehall, I am more convinced than ever that, for all its problems, independence is Scotland’s only way out.