Yesterday the UK government published the second paper in its Scotland Analysis programme, a forensic and highly detailed analysis on the currency and monetary policy implications of Scottish independence. You can read and download the publication for free on the Scotland Office website here.

The focus of the report is to discuss in depth Scotland’s four currency options, should it vote to separate from the UK. They are:

• A formal currency union with the rest of the UK.
• Sterlingisation (i.e. unilaterally adopt sterling).
• Join the euro.
• Introduce a new, separate Scottish currency.

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“Pearl of Tyburn” is one of our readers from the US. She runs Union Jack Chat and authors the blog “Longbow and Rosary Beads”. She has kindly provided us with the biographies of the United Kingdom’s four national saints on their respective days.

The Story of St. George

George is said to have been born in the late third century in the City of Cappadocia, now part of Turkey. He was from a Greek Christian family, and his father, Gerontios, was a respected officer in the Roman Army. When Gerontios died, George’s mother, Polychronia, took her son and moved back to her native city of Lyda, in present-day Israel. The teenaged George soon followed in his footsteps and joined the military. Presenting himself before Emperor Diocletian, George was welcomed enthusiastically because Diocletian had considered Gerontios to be one of his finest officers.

By his late 20’s George had been promoted to the rank of Tribunus and stationed as an imperial guard of the emperor at Nicomedia. But 302 A.D. Diocletian, under the influence of anti-Christian Galerius, issued an edict ordering that every Christian soldier in the army should be arrested. George, who had served the Roman establishment faithfully over the years, was incensed. He courageously went before Diocletian and spoke out against the ill-treatment of Christians. He vocally denounced the emperor’s edict in the presence of his soldiers and Tribunes and declared that he himself worshipped Jesus Christ.

Diocletian was dismayed by this bold display. He did not want to harm the son of Galerius and tried to bribe George with gifts of land, money, and slaves to entice him to burn incense to the pagan gods. But George never accepted any of the offers. Instead, he tore up the emperor’s edict and threw down his Imperial Eagle standard in protest and resignation of his office. Diocletian, infuriated, ordered the spirited officer seized, stripped, and tortured on a wheel of swords. Legend has it that his wounds were healed three consecutive times by Christ, and that his captors tried to kill him by forcing him to swallow poison and by submerging him in a cauldron of molten lead. In spite of this, he still remained alive.

Meanwhile, Empress Alexandria, Diocletian’s wife, came to visit George in prison. She inquired why he was willing to go through so much suffering, and George witnessed to her about the Christian Faith. She eventually converted because of his example, causing Diocletian to become more enraged than ever. He ordered George to be dragged to a pagan temple, informing him that he had one more chance to sacrifice to the pagan gods and save his life. A crowd gathered to watch the tortured former officer sacrifice at the temple. But instead, George offered a prayer to the Christian God.

Suddenly, a tremendous earthquake shook the ground, causing idols to smash and the pagan temple to be damaged. Following this, George was taken before the city walls of Nicomedia and beheaded. Empress Alexandria was later executed for treason as well, along with a pagan priest, Athanasius, who was also converted through the influence of George. The martyred young officer came to be honored by both Christians and Muslims and has been adopted by many countries to be their patron saint, including Greece, Georgia, Romania, Ethiopia, the Ukraine, and of course, England. He is also regarded as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.

The cult of St. George took shape in England as early as the 8th century. The image of George as a medieval knight became prevalent during the Crusades, and it became deeply rooted in the English national psyche. King Richard I put his crusaders under the patronage of St. George when they set off for the Holy Land to battle with the Saracens. Therefore, the crusading flag with a red cross on a white field came to be known as “St. George’s Cross”. Its design was incorporated into the Union Flag of the United Kingdom and still serves as England’s individual national flag.

King Edward III later named George the patron saint of England when he formed the Order of the Garter in his honor, and St. George’s Feast was kept as a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics in England until 1778. Shakespeare further popularized the saint in his plays by having main characters such as Henry V and Richard III use his name as a battle-cry. Ironically, William Shakespeare is to have been both been born to have died on St. George’s Feast. In another famous day in British history, Gen. James Wolfe and his army landed in Canada on St. George’s Day in 1759. His men took it as a good omen that the British would be successful in their conquest of the territory.

In 1940 during the Second World War, King George VI inaugurated the George Cross, to be awarded to those who showed great heroism and conspicuous courage in situations of extreme danger. The award, depicting St. George slaying the dragon on the silver cross, is usually given out to civilians. This goes to show that the inspirational quality of the “soldier saint” really does transcend military rank.

St. George, in many ways, has come to represent the best aspects of the English identity, including courage, faithfulness, tenacity, and fair amount of pluck. The fact that he was not English himself is just one of those little ironies that makes the whole story so deliciously British. The Feast of St. George is celebrated on April 23rd.

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For harmony to prevail it is important that society’s members do not begin to see themselves as being constantly singled out to their direct disadvantage.  For them not to begin to develop a “siege mentality” it is vital that their culture is respected rather than being constantly attacked.

Therefore, this St George’s Day, I have to ask: Why are so-called “Unionists” not as appalled as I am at the constant denigration of the English?  Why do Unionists continue to insist that their actions are not resulting in a slowly building resentment amongst the English population?

No doubt there are many readers already dismissing what I am saying as nothing more than the rantings of another English Nationalist.

But ask yourself this.

Who would have thought of the idea of English nationalism as being a commonplace and widespread phenomenon even as little as 15 years ago?

Devolution has made the Scots more Scottish and the Welsh more Welsh.  So how can it be so surprising that it has made the English more English?  After all, Devolution deliberately stoked nationalism in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  It would have been more surprising if this hadn’t had any effect on the English!

The dangers were obvious from the start.  A resurgent English identity would have the potential to weaken and destabilise the Union.  However the response to this possibility was nothing more than insane.  By deliberately attempting to suppress English identity they have only succeeded in inflaming English identity.  But more perplexing though is the wilful refusal to even recognise that this is happening.

Just look at the recently published 2011 Census results.  England had over 32 million (32,007,983) people (or 60.4%) who stated they had only English national identity.  A further 4.8 million (4,820,181) people (or 9.1%) stated that their National Identity was “English and British”.  That means over 70% of England’s population were expressing their identity as English and with the overwhelming majority now making clear that they considered themselves as exclusively English.  The “British Only” contingent is down to a mere 10 million (10,171,834) people (or 19.2%).

This isn’t (yet) a threat to the Union.  However there is a definite shift in attitudes, a resentment at always drawing the short straw.  It is unfocused for now – but for how much longer?

Neal Ascherson understood the likely results as long ago as April 2005 when he made the following remark in a Prospect Magazine article:

“Yes, there is an emerging Englishness which is still thought to be slightly incorrect.  Something is bursting to come out.  But sadly, the English intelligentsia, or the liberal English middle class, which ought to be leading political developments, ought to be taking over this emerging feeling; saying yes, let’s make a democratic, tolerant, forward-looking nation; is just sitting back and saying ‘English nationalism, awful, horrible, leave it to the yobs’.”

And so England is being reborn with a siege mentality.  The Union is no longer seen as something forged to our mutual benefit but rather as a zero-sum game to the continual disadvantage of the English – and with predictable results.

Happy St George’s Day.

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Lucius Winslow is an MA Politics student at Queen’s University Belfast, who takes an intensive interest in his subject. He also writes things.

I am aware that there has been a tidal wave of punditry upon the demise of the Iron Lady. Indeed as Sean Thomas in the Telegraph sardonically pointed out, she is in the process of being deified.

But I’ll throw in my thoughts, for she really was that colossal. Do try and bear your way through it dear reader. I know you’re fatigued, but this is short and as yet uncovered. Simply put, Mrs Thatcher strengthened the Union.

This was not politically, where she was (somewhat irrationally) disliked in Scotland, never strong in Wales, and at times despised by both communities in Northern Ireland. The vitriol of the regional political establishment’s dislike of her pressured a foolish Labour party into establishing Scottish and Welsh devolution, with all the nationalist ramifications that have since become clear.

Worse, her unashamed Englishness (and a strikingly ignorant tendency to label her a southerner at that) eroded a party north of the border which had been led by a Scot as recently as 1964.

So one might argue that she weakened the political bonds of the United Kingdom. But it should be noted that the constitutional damage was done by others, and not the Conservative Party.

No, where Thatcher strengthened the Union was by turning around the economy. She made Britain overall stronger for this. I don’t need to go into details here, fortunately others have done this. Let’s stick with the impressive GDP figures, up 23.3%, no mean feat given she had to fight the enemy within to achieve it.

She also gave Britain a confidence that was previously lacking. Ours was no longer to be a union in decline, but a great and still-respected nation, in the first rank amongst the peoples of the earth. For that alone I think she saved her country. She made us proud again of our amour propre (which, to be fair most Britons, left as well as right, always had. But there’s no telling that to the cosmopolitan London Guardian/BBC set).

And through that achievement all parts of the Union owe her credit. Well, except for the new enemy within…

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There have been a lot of complaints recently from Scottish independence supporters about cuts and austerity. Leaving the UK is portrayed as a way of avoiding all of the nasty things that the Conservatives are once again doing to us Scots. Not only would we get rid of the “bedroom tax” and other such horrors, we would get rid of the Tories to boot. What’s not to like?

The Tories have become a sort of mythical hate figure in Scotland that children learn about at their mother’s knee. I’ve met lots of Scots who read the Daily Mail and agree with much of what is written there. But on the suggestion that they might be Conservative supporters, they recoil in horror. The folk memory of Margaret Thatcher and the poll tax is just too strong, almost as if she were Cromwell in Ireland. But the danger is that the sort of prejudice, which most Scots feel against Tories, will prevent us from sensibly analysing the present economic situation in the UK and the potential economic situation of an independent Scotland.

Like most people I’ve received benefits. When I was a student there were full grants, plus dole and housing benefit during the holidays. I used to spend the summers studying and had absolutely no need to look for work. It was great. I benefited. I loved it and I’m very glad that I had such advantages. I spent around 9 years studying at public expense and came out of it with a considerable profit. Having benefited so much, it would hardly be sensible for me to oppose public spending or welfare. But that does not mean that I should be incapable of trying to understand the problems of today.

Let’s all agree that it would be great if the NHS had an unlimited budget, if everyone got as much unemployment and housing benefit as they desired and that pensions were twice average earnings. Fine, but all of these nice things have to be paid for. Where does the money come from? Obviously it comes from the wealth of a country. After all, poor countries tend to have a very limited welfare state. Now let’s look at the present economic situation in the UK. We have a national debt and we have a deficit. I used to be a bit confused about these terms until I began to think of them in a more manageable way.

Let’s say, I run a small shop. In order to start my business I might have had to go to the bank and taken out a loan. That’s the scale of my debt. But in running my shop if I make a profit I am running a surplus, which I can use to pay down my debt, while if I make a loss I am running a deficit, which gradually increases my debt. Would anyone call a shopkeeper who continually ran a deficit wealthy? Obviously not. But neither should we call the UK wealthy. Our national debt amounts to £1.1 trillion, or £18,000 per person. Our deficit last year, despite all the talk of austerity, was nearly £100 billion. The UK has been running a deficit since 2001, which means we’ve been making a loss for over a decade.

What can a government do in these circumstances? It can raise taxes, cut spending and it can hope that economic growth will bring it more profit. But there’s a tricky balance. If you raise taxes too high, it will discourage growth. Clearly, if my small shop is taxed too highly, it is unlikely to make a profit. But what goes for shops goes for people, too. There’s a limit to how high a government can raise taxes without seriously damaging economic growth. At present, UK public spending as a percentage of GDP is around 45%. But ideally it would be somewhat lower. This is owing to the fact that when public spending rises above around 25% it begins to have an adverse impact on growth. There’s a trade-off between economic growth and funding the things we want, like welfare, the NHS and education. At 25% we would have ideal conditions for economic growth, but less than ideal social provision. Therefore, it is reasonable to sacrifice a certain amount of potential economic growth in order to pay for things which make our society more pleasant.

But any government has to be aware that the nice things we want come from economic growth and so a balance has to be struck. Raise public spending too high and you will do lasting damage to the welfare state, because you will damage the source of its funding. What this means is that there comes a point when a government cannot sensibly continue to raise taxes, otherwise the economy would become a planned economy along Soviet lines. That way lies North Korea, poverty and madness. Politicians can debate where to put the line, but they cannot change the reality. If you want a competitive society with economic growth, you can only raise taxes so much.

Any government faced with the present UK economic circumstances would have to cut public spending. The Labour Party are often pretty good in a national crisis. They too would be making cuts. The only question then is where the cuts fall. The difficulty is that most public spending is on things we really want. The areas we spend most on are pensions 18%, welfare 17%, healthcare 17% and education 13%. So if we are to make any sort of serious cut in public spending, it is in these areas that we have to do it. That’s why making cuts is so painful.

Could Scotland avoid all of this by becoming independent? The problem is that an independent Scotland would also have a national debt. It would retain a proportion of the UK national debt. Dividing it according to population would make it somewhere around £100 billion. If an independent Scotland were to be immediately making a profit, we could use that profit to pay down a proportion of our national debt. But just like the UK now, Scotland would be making a loss. North Sea oil would be a large contributor to an independent Scotland’s budget, but we would still be running a deficit. Both sides of the independence debate dispute the size of an independent Scotland’s deficit, whether it would be smaller or larger than the rest of the UK. But it is uncontroversial to point out that an independent Scotland would be running a deficit. No one disputes this.

Given then that Scotland would have a large national debt and would have a deficit, we would face the same choice as the UK does at present. Scotland’s public spending as a percentage of GDP is somewhat higher, at around 50%, than the the UK average as we already have a larger public sector and have certain benefits which are unavailable elsewhere. An independent Scotland could not sensibly raise taxes and indeed, Alex Salmond with good reason favours cutting corporation tax. What this means is that an independent Scotland would have to make public spending cuts. Some of these cuts would have to fall in areas like pensions, health, welfare and education, as these are the areas where we spend the most. But given that we want all of these nice things, public spending cuts would inevitably have to be painful.

The biggest danger to the future prosperity of an independent Scotland is if the Scottish public voted for independence thinking that this was a way of avoiding austerity, cuts and Tories. This might mean that a future Scottish government would be unable politically to make the same sorts of attempts as are at present being made by the UK government to cut the deficit and eventually bring the UK into profit. If an independent Scotland were to fail to address the issues surrounding an unsustainable deficit and an ever increasing national debt, the markets would soon look at the creditworthiness of this new nation. That way leads to bankruptcy and the fate of small nations like Greece and Cyprus.

An independent Scotland, is perfectly viable economically. Whether we would be better or worse of is a matter for debate. But a new nation cannot be built on false promises. Trying to con the Scottish people into voting for independence as a means of avoiding austerity and cuts, which while painful, are necessary is to fail to face up to reality. Supporters of independence have to show that they are willing to make hard economic choices, as failure to do so would lead to the long term destruction of our wealth and a lowering of our standard of living. There’s nothing fair about this except for the fact that it would harm us all equally.

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Sammy McNally is an itinerant Fenian scribbler… and a fictional prod character bestowed upon us by James Young. He has previously written for other blogs such as BangorDub, Three Thousand Versts and Slugger O’Toole. He describes his politics as “Republican lite”.

It is highly likely that Margaret Thatcher’s name will crop up at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis, but highly unlikely that any pleasant words will be uttered by any delegates and even less likely that Gerry et al will mention that part of her legacy – support for low corporation tax – that has made its way into SF economic policy.

What will be discussed, of course, will be the hunger strikes, and as someone who supported the hunger strikers I think it fair to say that even from Thatcher’s point of view (which was more or less the same as the majority of Unionist opinion) –. that the hunger strikers had to be defeated and isolated as ‘terrorists’ rather than reconciled  – her policy failed, and the fall out arguably turned SF into a credible political force which in turn perhaps inevitably and eventually led them into government in Northern Ireland.

But Thatcher, the bête noire of Irish republicans, also signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which arguably made peace possible years later. On reflection Nationalists, and indeed Unionists and Irish Republicans, should give her credit for that (although perhaps not publicly). Just as with David Trimble years later with the Good Friday Agreement, Thatcher did the necessary ‘heavy lifting’.

She was a formidable and principled political opponent to Irish republicanism who sought to defend her ‘own’ country against a determined ‘insurgency’ and she played a significant role, both intentionally an unintentionally, in bringing about what seems to have turned out as ‘peace’. She should be viewed in that considered perspective, rather than through the lens of emotional self-indulgence which is bring so over-used by her opponents and detractors.

When we move off Ireland to Britain and the economy, the levels of hypocrisy from trendy, lefty bandwagon-ing ‘socialists’ sitting pretty in post-Thatcher Britain is running on overdrive as they seek to vilify her at the same time as hypocritical Tories (who stabbed her in the back) seek to deify her. It seems there is little chance of Thatcher’s legacy being considered simply on its merits.

So far, a quality debate. Not.

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As a young News Letter reporter, I spent late 1985 and much of 1986 tramping the damp and cold streets of Loyal Ulster producing column inch after column inch of copy on the Ulster Says No and Ulster Still Says No protests.

It is rather bemusing to see Unionists heap praise on the recently departed former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when in 1985/86, burning effigies of the Tory PM was the order of the day at anti-Dublin Diktat rallies.

Much has been made in the media about the so-called ‘celebration’ parties surrounding her death, especially in republican districts in Northern Ireland and mining communities in Britain. It makes me wonder what the reaction in Unionist communities in Ulster would have been if Thatcher had died of a sudden stroke in early 1986 instead of 2013.

I recall reporting on one of the biggest Ulster Says No rallies outside of the massive Belfast City Hall protest in my home town of Ballymena in North Antrim in 1986. On the platform sat the then Unionist leadership – Ian Paisley senior of the DUP, James Molyneaux of the UUP, and Jim Kilfedder from North Down of the Ulster Popular Unionist Party.

I looked up to see an effigy of Maggie being waved above my head. Suddenly, there was a loud cheer and the effigy erupted in flames above my head! I pushed people behind me to get away from the ‘flaming Maggie’ as moments later the effigy fell to the ground.

I just wonder what the thoughts of many of the thousands of loyalists who attended that Ballymena rally on that cold day in early 1986 are today with Mrs Thatcher now dead.

She was regarded as a devout supporter of the Union, yet from 15 November 1985, on the day she signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement with Garret FiztGerald at Hillsborough, she became almost as big a hate figure in Unionism in Northern Ireland as in the republican community.

When she died, did she redeem herself in the eyes of the Unionist community, or even had she been forgiven by the time of her political downfall in the early 1990s?

Thatcher the Snatcher was another nickname she was labelled with – that’s how loyalists came to hate Maggie after she ‘snatched the Union’ away from Protestants by signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Signed at her Hillsborough bolthole in Co Down with then Taoiseach FitzGerald, with the stroke of a pen Thatcher became the most hated woman in loyalism since the conflict erupted in 1968. In four years, the Tory PM went from hero to zero among loyalists despite her tough stance against the republican hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981.

While IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands MP saw an estimated 100,000 walk behind his coffin in 1981, Thatcher’s signing of the Dublin Accord four years’ later saw an estimated 250,000 loyalists attend a massive Belfast City Hall protest rally at which Paisley senior issued his defiant ‘Never, never, never.’ speech.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement gave the Republic its first say in the running of the North since partition in the 1920s. The Dublin Diktat, as it was dubbed, led to the formal opening of the Maryfield Secretariat near Belfast where Southern civil servants were based.

But in reality, did Maggie really become Thatcher the Hatcher rather than Thatcher the Snatcher? Did she hatch a plan to give Unionists an effective say in the running of the Republic, but they were so busy protesting they failed to see the political gift Thatcher had handed them? While some may suggest that in signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Thatcher laid the foundation for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the modern peace process, is the real legacy of November 1985 still to be written?

Is the true legacy of the Anglo-Irish Agreement the foundation for the Republic to rejoin the Commonwealth and for southern Ireland to join the United Kingdom in leaving the European Union? On the surface, Maryfield was an historic compromise which angered Unionists. Was it simply to get greater cross-border security to force the Provos to the negotiating table, and ultimately the 1994 ceasefire?

Unionism failed to return the serve of Maryfield. Unionists took to the streets in their tens of thousands instead of the then Unionist leadership demanding an effective say in the running of the Republic. Partition was The Great Betrayal when Carson and Craig condemned tens of thousands of Southern-based Unionists to their fate in a Catholic-dominated, nationalist-run Irish Free State. What about the contributions which Southern Ulster counties had made to the original Ulster Volunteers?

In 1985, Messrs Paisley senior, Molyneaux and Kilfedder should have been on the first train to Dublin to open a Unionist Embassy in Leinster House and demand that the Dail address the faults of the make-shift banana republic. Perhaps in 1985 if Unionism had whined in Dublin rather than walked in Ulster, the IRA and INLA would have been brought to their knees sooner than the 1990s?

The anti-Thatcher ‘Ulster Says No’ campaign saw a mobilisation among loyalists not witnessed since the Ulster Workers’ Council strike of May 1974 which collapsed the Sunningdale Executive. However, just as Thatcher had faced down republicans over the hunger strikers’ demands, so too, she was equally determined to face down loyalist demands to ditch the 1985 Agreement.

Not only did moderate Unionists mobilise by joining the mainstream Unionist parties, but Thatcher’s determination to keep the Agreement saw a huge boost in membership of loyalist death squads such as the UDA and UVF. It also sparked the creation of numerous new hardline groups as loyalists frantically searched for means to topple the Agreement. Working class loyalists launched the Ulster Clubs movement, which was a mirror image of the Unionist Clubs network formed in the early 1900s to combat Home Rule for Ireland.

The most notorious of the groups was the red-bereted Ulster Resistance, once openly supported by former and current DUP leaders and First Ministers Ian Paisley senior and Peter Robinson. Army agent the late Brian Nelson arranged for a huge consignment of South African weapons to be smuggled into the North for Ulster Resistance, the UVF and UDA, a move which resulted in the murders of dozens of nationalists.

The extremist Movement for Self-Determination (MSD) was also launched to campaign for an independent Ulster, with the racist National Front also arriving in the North to try and take advantage of loyalist unrest.

The Agreement also ended the historic link between the Ulster Unionist Party and Thatcher’s Tory Party when the Ulster Unionist Council withdrew from the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations. When she gave her blessing for the launch of Conservative Associations in the North, the project quickly floundered such was the anger against her. While many who established the Conservative Associations in Northern Ireland in the late 1980s were themselves Right-wingers and loved to be photographed with Thatcher, the immediate legacy of the Anglo-Irish Agreement meant that the Tory move into Ulster was doomed from the start. What right-thinking Unionist would vote for the party which had signed away the Union?

In 1985, Thatcher was seen as a traitor by Northern Ireland Unionism for signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement. That was her immediate legacy among the Unionist community. But when – not if – the Commonwealth standard flutters over Leinster House, and as the south grows through Ulster ever more interconnected with the mainland, Unionist history may quickly rewrite her legacy.

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Margaret Thatcher changed Britain, for better or worse that may be the question and everyone’s answer will differ. Thatcher’s legacy in Ulster began with one of standing up to terrorists, after all the Provisional IRA murdered her close adviser and companion, Airey Neave and later the INLA murdered Ian Gow. Thatcher initially stood up to those who were in the Maze prison, ignoring their demands and refusing to treat them any differently than criminals from Finchley.

Sinn Fein however would have you believe that she ignored their demands and let ten men die on hunger strike. Recent cabinet papers and the writings of some Republican commentators contradict this. The Cabinet had in actual fact made offers of a compromise, all of which were rejected. So, did she stand up to terrorists then? Well, while she offered a compromise she was most certainly not be remembered for appeasing terrorists or letting them off with criminality and lawlessness.

The above will ultimately be how Republicans in Northern Ireland will remember her. Unionists will remember her for one thing only – the Anglo-Irish Agreement – regarded as treason and a complete avoidance of the views of the majority of people in Northern Ireland. Ian Gow of course fell out with Thatcher over her signature appearing on the document and their relationship perhaps never recovered.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement nevertheless provided the catalyst for reform and change in Northern Ireland politics as some thirteen years later the Belfast Agreement was signed where local politicians, Unionists and Nationalists, took control of the reins through the establishment of the North-South Ministerial Council and ultimately the NI Assembly.

Mrs Thatcher may not be remembered too fondly in many parts of the United Kingdom, never mind Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, the things we take for granted today in the UK – credit cards, free market economy, social enterprise and the balancing of the books – i.e. not spending any more than you can afford – are all part of Thatcher’s legacy. In fact, without Thatcher would we have ever seen the Tony Blair we saw rise to such great heights in 1997? Would we see so many people, brought up in council estates, owning their own property and children being brought up as middle class rather than working class?

I am one of Thatcher’s children. My parents benefited under Thatcher’s influence and ideology (although may have difficulties with some of her policies), which ultimately impacted upon my upbringing, my social status and my life. While Mrs Thatcher has been out of power and effectively out of politics for over twenty years her legacy and influence continues. This is the measure of her legacy. Can you think of any other former Prime Minister who continues to dominant headlines, conversations and society at large?

Being British to Thatcher wasn’t just about flag waving; it was a way of life – a way of life she sought to promote in Northern Ireland through the promotion of the economy and private sector, through which, she believed, peace could be delivered within a stronger United Kingdom.

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Some Scots support independence come what may and nothing would change their minds. Other Scots want the UK to continue and are just as fixed in their view. But for those people who have not already decided, the debate is really a matter of weighing up the potential advantages and disadvantages of independence.

The fact that most commentary on the issues involved is completely one-sided can hardly be helpful for people looking at the pros and cons in this way. The polarisation of the debate means that nationalists frequently attempt to argue that the UK has no benefits at all, while unionists frequently strive to portray an independent Scotland as if we would be joining the Third World.

But this is to treat political opponents as if they were fools. There must be something attractive about independence, otherwise the idea would not have attracted the support of a significant number of Scots and we would not be having the debate at all. Likewise, there must be something attractive about the UK, otherwise we would have become independent long ago. The essence of the debate should be an attempt to investigate these advantages while assessing the corresponding disadvantages.

Looking at the pros and cons of independence is to look fundamentally at two issues, money and power. Economically, the main pro is North Sea oil. It was the discovery of this resource which gave wings to the independence campaign some 40 years ago. Without it few in Scotland would ever have considered independence as an option. This is is not to talk Scotland down, but rather it is to recognise that Scotland’s position without oil would be not dissimilar to that of Wales, Northern Ireland and the North of England. Those parts of the UK, which were centres of heavy industry, have still not fully recovered from the decline of those industries. The difference between a Scottish nationalist and a Welsh nationalist is that independence is an economically viable option for the former, while it is not for the latter. The difference is oil.

At the moment oil revenues are shared in Britain. They help Scotland economically, but they also help Northern Ireland, Wales and England. But if we had these revenues to ourselves, clearly we would get more. It’s like a cake divided between four at present. If Scotland had the cake to ourselves, we could scoff the lot. For people, supposedly on the left, to put forward this argument has always struck me as hypocritical, but nevertheless, having all of the revenue from oil is clearly something to be counted on the pro side of the debate about  independence.

But what of the the downside? At present Scotland gains a share of central government funding from the UK, calculated according to the Barnett formula. This enables the level of public spending per person in Scotland to be somewhat higher than in England. In the event of independence,  this funding would obviously cease. As a newly independent country, we would also have a number of disadvantages. Our borrowing costs would certainly be higher than the rest of the UK (rUK). Assuming that we kept the pound, we would be borrowing in a foreign currency, which is inherently more risky than borrowing in our own currency. Moreover, as a new country we would have to establish a track record economically before the markets could assume that we would be economically prudent.

We would likewise have certain start-up costs. We would have to set up things like a tax collecting agency, a pensions agency and a passport’ agency, not to mention an army, navy and air force. No doubt much of this would already be in place, but just as any new business has start-up costs, so too would Scotland. There would be some loss of the economies of scale, which at present we enjoy by being a part of the UK and most likely some disruption to the UK single market, which to an extent depends on us all living in the same country.

No one knows the exact figures, and they are anyway subject to the bias inherent in this debate, but it is reasonable to guess that the advantages of having all of the oil revenue versus the disadvantages already mentioned, would leave us perhaps a little bit better off than we are at present, but not by much and maybe not at all. But it must be remembered that oil revenues fluctuate greatly and are anyway in decline. Scotland will not become Norway. Its too late and besides we are not remotely like Scandinavians. The main economic advantage of independence therefore can be summed up as a much greater share of a declining resource. Even if it we were to be better off in the short term, what about 30 years from now?

The other main advantage of independence is that we would not have to share power with Westminster. We would have complete political control from Edinburgh. But let’s look at how the political situation works at present. Under devolution the Scottish parliament already controls health, law, education, local government, road, rail and air, farming, fisheries and sport. The Scotland Act 2012 gave the Scottish parliament the power to raise and lower income tax. At present around two thirds of public spending is controlled by the Scottish parliament.

What this means, in practice, is that we already have two thirds of the power. What power on the other hand is retained by Westminster? The UK government controls defence,  macroeconomic policy, foreign affairs, immigration, broadcasting, social security, pensions and the constitution. What this all means is that the debate about independence is really a debate about gaining power over these issues as to all intents and purposes we are already independent with regard to those issues that are already controlled by Holyrood.

People in Scotland are able to influence the powers that are retained by Westminster, because we have a vote in each General Election and MPs from Scotland have frequently been important members of successive governments. This would clearly cease to be the case in the event of independence. Moreover, if Scotland became independent and kept the pound, it is doubtful that we would gain much control over macroeconomic policy. The Bank of England would still control matters such as interest rates and monetary policy. To remain successfully in a currency union with rUK, Scotland would largely have to follow the same economic policies as rUK. It might even be necessary for the rUK Chancellor to oversee the Scottish budget.

The foreign policies of most Western European nations are generally very similar and  follow reasonably closely the line of the larger powers. To be frank, we neither know nor care about the foreign policy of a country like Denmark and Scotland’s foreign policy would be similarly irrelevant. If an independent Scotland were to be a member of NATO, we would be further pressured to follow the American line or face the consequences of US displeasure. If an independent Scotland wanted to retain an open border with rUK, we would not be able to have our own immigration policy as immigrants to Scotland could immediately move south of the border.

Scots should ask themselves if gaining control over broadcasting, losing the BBC and ITV,  would give us better television and radio. Would gaining control over defence, including setting up our own version of MI5 and MI6 really make us safer? Each of us should think seriously about whether we would rather have our pension and social security rights guaranteed by the UK treasury or by a newly formed Scottish treasury?

While there are advantages to Scottish independence, there are also disadvantages. Most importantly, we would be giving up the shared solidarity of being citizens of UK. What strikes me as strange is that we would be turning ourselves into foreigners in order to take control over matters which are often fairly abstract, like the constitution, or which work well at a UK level and which frequently are not at all big issues at the average election. Holyrood already controls the day to day issues that affect our lives, like health and education.

In the event of independence, there would be a new sovereign nation called Scotland. There would be a seat at the UN and no doubt, there would be a lot of flag waving. But practically speaking, we would not have gained much extra power. Breaking up the UK would cause years of negotiation and uncertainty. It would certainly spook the markets and damage the economies both in Scotland and the other parts of the UK, but the potential gains appear marginal and scarcely worth the trouble.

People who are desperate for Scotland to be a sovereign nation will not be concerned by any of this. It’s always worth remembering that some people would argue for independence even if they were to be worse off, because their ambition that Scotland should be a nation again is central to their sense of identity. The rest of us however, need to carefully consider the pros and cons of independence. Otherwise, the deal we are being offered when weighed in the balance might be found wanting.

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