SNP leadership must listen to concerns over Growth report motion

READ MORE: Letters, March 16

My concern as an SNP member and a committed Yesser is that the SNP high command will ignore what they were told through the National Assemblies process. This was a convocation in the true sense of the word, which even declined to reach out to the wider Yes community. And convocations are readily controlled from the centre. After all, where is the outcome report on all that energy and ideas that was promised?

On the currency question and the idea of the six tests, I for one will be voting against the resolution as currently formulated to the spring conference. Our study examined the consequence of two countries which borrowed sizeable funds in a foreign currency. It was dollars in the case of Argentina and their economic crisis of 1998. The country was in-hock to the international financial markets and its debt was outwith its control.

Similarly, the Greek 2007-15 crisis was a result of its membership of a currency union (the Euro) where its government and central bank could not use currency devaluation to mange its financial problems but had to rely on the European Central Bank (ECB) ostensibly run by Germany and their economy. The consequence of which was savage neoliberal terms and conditions for bailout funding. It illustrated once again that countries without control of their own currency can’t use a combination of monetary tools, including devaluation and quantitative easing, to get themselves out of trouble – the latter being the case with the UK post 2008.

The fundamental contradiction of the Growth Commission’s approach to our currency is that, if the primary purpose of independence is to create the opportunity to run the affairs of our own country, why would we cede authority over the currency to the Bank of England, the Treasury and London financial markets?

On the question of B1: Annual Solidarity Payment, the group believed that Scotland should not, as part of the annual solidarity payment, contribute funds to the UK’s international aid programme as proposed by the Commission. It considered it important that Scotland creates its own policies and strategy for international aid that reflect our distinct approach to equality, social solidarity, climate justice and humanitarian assistance.

The past two years have demonstrated that we have no role to play as a partner in any GB enterprise and merely donating to a GB kitty on international aid would be a betrayal of our own capacity for decision making.

If the annual solidarity payment is to be for debt incurred on our behalf and not necessarily with our explicit approval, perhaps it should be re-branded “foreign aid”.

Open discussion of the Growth Commission’s ideas is vital before the SNP conference to ease membership concerns. I for one am anxious about their unshakable determination to claim the high ground of British democracy and be the midwife of a People’s Vote, rather than focusing on gaining independence from the rotten corpse that is the Westminster Parliament.

Iain Bruce
Nairn
 

I THOUGHT Craig Dalzell’s letter was a first-rate factual and explanatory demolition of the restrictive centre-right vision that is the Growth Commission report.

In particular, it tackled the cringe-inducing solidarity payment to rUK of £5.3 billion per annum that is proposed and which could last for up to 30 years. Why Scotland, whose oil and gas resources were used to finance lunatic Thatcherite and Blairite experiments for decades, should take on any UK debt, when the UK itself has confirmed we are under no legal obligation to do so, is beyond belief, and should be beyond the pale for any serious independence supporter.

Arguing in reply to Common Weal criticism of the report in The National, SNP MSP Tom Arthur quoted the Growth report motion itself: “We would expect the true value of assets and liabilities to be examined with greater rigour in advance of agreement being reached” (We won’t make the same Brexit mistakes when we negotiate independence, March 16).

READ MORE: We won't make the same Brexit mistakes when we negotiate independence

Why then begin negotiations from a standpoint of already having conceded an annual payment to the sixth richest country in the world of £5.3bn, at a time when the Growth Commission report wants to restrict our own spending and borrowing?

Every annual payment of £5.3bn to rUK means less money for our own schools and NHS, less money for our own infrastructure, and less money for investment in the new sciences and technologies that will actually drive responsible and sustainable growth.

The motion at SNP conference is being sold as a necessary and reasonable plan for independence, but, in fact, it ties Scotland in from the beginning to a centre-right Blairite vision of our independent Scotland – a vision that might reassure some middle-class layers but will alienate the huge swathes of working class votes needed to win independence.

Common Weal, while arguing for a series of solid left-wing policies, argues for a “future neutral” approach. In other words, let’s do what ‘s required to be “indy ready”, but leave it to the people of an independent Scotland to choose for themselves what roads they want to go down politically, economically, democratically and constitutionally.

Nicola Sturgeon has talked – rightly – in the past about independence being about choice. But the Growth Commission motion would restrict real choice.

Many Yessers sincerely hope SNP members will, for the first time in recent history, vote down the leadership proposal and encourage them to return to a more “future-neutral” vision of independence.

If they do not, and this becomes official SNP policy, opponents of the policy will have a duty to state it in no way reflects their aspirations for Scotland, and that support for independence should never be conflated with support for the neo-liberal Growth Commission position and the ridiculous knee-bending solidarity payment.

Steve Arnott
Inverness