This Blog has already advanced the view that the form of independence which Alex Salmond is offering to the Scottish people is a pig in a poke, since his model of a free Scotland sharing the pound would be dominated by the economic policy of Westminster, whose parliament and government would contain no Scottish MPs whatsoever.
Bonnie Scotland would become to England as Greece now is to Germany. Moreover if eventually Scotland went for the Euro, its economy would fall under German control anyway, so it would line up behind Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Co. It may do better than they did first time round but it would have to surrender a very large slice of its newly won sovereignty.
The Scottish National Party, faced with the destruction of the economic core of the Yes campaign by the triple announcement today from all three main parties at Westminster that a currency union will not happen or even be discussed, have taken refuge in a fatal swamp of wishful thinking and denial.
Even if their wishes were to come true and a currency union were achieved, it would require a surrender of sovereignty to a Tory dominated England by a left leaning Scotland. If we detach the Scottish contingent to the Westminster Parliament, we find that in England and Wales there are a total of 573 constituencies of which 300 are Tory and only 216 are Labour.
That leaves 57 held by other parties and if Northern Ireland is added, we get a further 18. If all the NI MPs and all the other parties in the commons were to join with Labour, it will still be short of a majority. This suggests a UK without Scotland will be Tory led, just as Scotland has been Labour led at Westminster for decades.
The conclusion must be that without its own currency, Scotland would gain no independence worth having. In the face of having the rug of currency union pulled from under him, Alex Salmond must come forward with a credible plan for a Scottish currency or accept his cause is lost. The project will not be helped by the fact that Scotland’s two big banking groups RBS and HBOS are technically bust. Not a good foundation upon which to build.