At First Minister’s Questions at Holyrood today, Scottish Labour’s Deputy Leader, Kezia Dugdale, challenged First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon on the SNP Scottish Government’s wildly astray projections on the revenues to be gained from the North Sea by an independent Scotland.
The SNP’s prospectus for independence had factored in to its financial projections £6Bn a year of oil revenues.
Ms Dugdale pointed out that the independent Office for Budget Responsibility has just readjusted its forecast of revenues from oil and gas to the pocket money status of £600M for 2016-17 – which would have been the first year of an independent Scotland, had the September 2014 vote gone the other way.
Ms Dugdale suggested that the extent to which the SNP’s projection of £6Bn [which it had described as conservative] was adrift of £600M, should make Scotland chary about the SNP government’s chances of making responsible sense of the ‘full fiscal autonomy’ for which it is now arguing.
The First Minister attempted to shrug off the embarrassment by collegiality, saying: ‘Everyone’s projections about oil were wrong’.Yes they were.But only the SNP attempted to take a nation of 5.3 mlllion people into unsheltered independence on the back of what they knew was a punt – and has proved to be a cool 90% wide of the mark.
