Where is the rebuttal of doom and gloom anti-independence reports?

Three cheers, then, for the gloomy academic study on the costs of independence, published yesterday, which served to refocus minds wonderfully. Or should have.

The London School of Economics (LSE) analysis says independence will “leave Scotland considerably poorer”, hitting our economy up to three times harder than Brexit and leaving Scots up to £2800 a year worse off.

Never mind any of the divisive, headline-grabbing issues of recent days. This is the biggest challenge currently facing ALL Yes campaigners in a oner. Even though Covid has thrown every balance sheet up in the air. Brexit proves Westminster rule is economically riskier than independence. EU membership now sits on the independence side of the equation.

Project Fear doesn’t have the same bite second time around and more folk know the sacred British pension is actually the second lowest in the developed world.

Meanwhile the single example of Estonia shows how game-changing independence can be for a people and an economy (as if the two are not umbilically conjoined). The Baltic Tiger was struggling as a forgotten corner of the old Soviet bloc in 1991 but is now the digital leader of Europe with a GDP predicted to equal Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway by 2025.

Who was predicting that kind of success in the dark days before independence when Estonia was 100% reliant on the Soviet Union for trade – not the bold scholars of the LSE, or anywhere else.

But still, these and other arguments don’t get psychically transmitted to the general public – they actually have to be made.

READ MORE: Scottish Government rejects claim Yes vote would hit economy harder than Brexit

Brexit means our land border with England will become more significant if Scotland becomes a member of the EU or the EEA “halfway house”. But each of our Triple A-rated Nordic neighbours has a different currency – still they manage to trade and cooperate on everything from energy distribution to defence. Of course, they are a rational bunch who work to eliminate pointless obstacles instead of inventing them. But trade within the island of Ireland demonstrates that – vaccine rammies notwithstanding – borders are only as problematic as you want them to be.

Currency is still an issue – mostly because of uncertainty about the SNP’s current position in the wake of successful amendments to the Growth Commission Report with no subsequent clarification. But lockdown has seen a wholesale switch to online payments, undermining previous worries about changing bag-loads of notes at the border.

Still, economic arguments may be relatively more prominent this time around.

Together with inertia and fear of change, they are all supporters of the Union have left.

So, when a new study comes along making gloomy predictions about the economics of independence, you’d expect every part of the infighting SNP to sit up, catch a grip and move seamlessly into instant rebuttal mode.

As I write on Wednesday afternoon, Business for Scotland and The National are preparing rebuttals, but looking at the SNP Media Unit on social media, I see nada.

This poses some big questions.

Who should be responsible and who is funded to react swiftly and authoritatively to this report – the SNP, the (not yet launched) Now Scotland, Business for Scotland, Voices for Scotland, this paper or whichever Yes-supporting commentator gets a BBC phone call and shifts their brain into gear fast enough to deliver a coherent and convincing response?

Thankfully, Radio Scotland’s early-morning team yesterday had the wit and contact details to put the excellent George Kerevan on air – the economist, former SNP MP and board member of Now Scotland duly dismantled the LSE report line by line. But if George had been ill, or his phone was out of charge or in the other room, what would have happened?

Who would have jumped into the breach? Who thinks it is their job to promote an alternative vision of Scotland’s future? Who dropped everything to tackle this downbeat vision of independence?

And if the answer is no-one, then we have a problem which deserves at least as much attention as the gender identity wars.

READ MORE: Would independence hit the Scottish economy harder than Brexit?

Let’s not beat about the bush. We urgently need a vision to hold beside the pessimistic pictures of independence that will roll in regularly between now and indyref2. But the SNP doesn’t appear to have one. Other parts of the Yes movement try to make up for this by providing visions of their own – but that’s hard without the cash, profile, status, authority and guaranteed mainstream media access enjoyed by the party of government.

The Scottish Greens are doing no better.

Where was yesterday’s rebuttal, lamenting the LSE’s climate-crisis-denying failure to place an economic value on the climate and environment in Scotland’s independent future – a difficult argument perhaps but one being gamely tackled on primetime TV every other night by David Attenborough. Wakey wakey.

Yes, the Greens resources are limited and media interest in “smaller parties” is low – except when they hold the balance of power in budget negotiations.

All the more reason to make sure your single pitch for public attention is about the truly big stuff – not laying into a highly respected politician whose determined focus on land and housing reform is the only reason Greens have any profile on these issues.

TO both independence-supporting parties then, a plea – and maybe a stern rebuke.

Focusing public minds on the benefits of independence is your job and your responsibility to members, voters and Yes supporters. It should be a constant, 24/7 exercise that operates in the real time of the news cycle, not the detached space of your own busy diaries and colour-coded schedules. Doubtless some great beard-pulling epic of a future plan is being crafted by the SNP for launch sometime soon. Soon is far too late. By then, the listening, viewing and reading public will have drunk the indy-undermining Kool-Aid and – with no alternative view – have started to feel depressed. The only acceptable timescale for rebutting negativity is immediate.

So (forgive the directness but nothing more nuanced seems to get through) a wee message to the SNP and its Media Unit. Get off your super-annuated backsides and get busy. Mutinies occur in the doldrums – when there’s literally no wind of change – and it’s the absence of inspiring words, actions, efforts or any feeling of dynamism from the SNP juggernaut that’s creating the fetid atmosphere in which independence supporters are turning on one another.

Yes, there’s the pandemic and lockdown.

But that’s all the MORE reason to have focused, targeted, planned activity – as if this country might actually be heading for independence any time soon.

Forward motion is the solution. So, get on with it. Indy-supporting Scots will not forgive the leaders of the SNP – any of them – for failing to get their priorities right at the start of this momentous year.

The answer doesn’t lie in yet another take on the vexed gender identity row – it lies in doing what has not been done these long years.

Vigorous leadership on independence and active daily rebuttal of stories knocking independence by the amply funded SNP. If that is too hard, the management of the party needs an urgent refresh.