Scotlands future - really?
Renewal - ISSN 0968-5211
Volume 22 Number 1-2 (2014)
Scotlands future - really?
Jim Gallagher pages -
Abstract
Scotland’s Future: Your Guide to an Independent Scotland
THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT, 2013
If you are in need of a doorstop, look no further. At 675 pages, an inch and a quarter thick, and three pounds in weight, the SNP’s independence manifesto, Scotland’s Future, will do that job admirably. Whether it also meets its stated aim of being ‘Your Guide to an Independent Scotland’ is another matter entirely.
It’s hard to say what kind of beast this baggy monster is. It’s neither a measured government White Paper setting out policy detail, nor a political tract making an impassioned case for independence. Sometimes it describes options open to an independent Scotland, and sometimes (wrongly, for a government document, published at taxpayers’ expense) sets out SNP party policy on which option to choose. The SNP would have been wiser to have a dry civil service document setting out the mechanics of transition to independence, and party publications making the case for separation, and how they would run an independent country. As it stands, the White Paper does none of these well.
Where it does succeed is in showing that, where these different aims conflict, the SNP’s partisan advantage trumps everything else.
To cite this article
Jim Gallagher (2014) Scotlands future - really?, Renewal, 22(1-2 ), -