The SNP’s General Election triumph couldn’t have been much better: 56 out of 59 seats, the support of 50% of voters, with massive majorities in former Labour constituencies.
Surely a second referendum will be promised in next year’s SNP manifesto?
Not necessarily. Why? It’s the economy stupid; at least it is if you accept that the SNP lost the 2014 referendum because they failed to convince Scots of the economic case for independence.
The North Sea oil industry has taken a sharp downturn. Not just because of the reduction in the price of a barrel of oil, but because of declining reserves. More than $4bn worth of North Sea fields are up for sale. EON, Total and LI Energy have all begun looking for buyers for their remaining share of reservoirs.
Production has fallen to less than a third of its 1999 level; the remaining North Sea fields are small, with costs amongst the highest in the world and tax cuts announced by Chancellor George Osborne having failed to reverse the trend.
Renewables are not delivering promised jobs; tidal and wave power, which Alex Salmond argued would deliver around 16,000 posts, is now back at the R&D stage.
And there has been a rash of redundancies, most recently at Tullis Russell, where over 400 workers are seeking new employment.
All of this might explain the SNP’s back peddling on the devolution of all tax and spending decisions to Scotland, with Scotland making a contribution to the UK for shared services. Given prominence at the start of the campaign, it was renamed Full Fiscal Responsibility (FFR) and given less prominence in their manifesto.
Scotland receives about £1,450 extra per person per year from Westminster in public spending, but generates about £250 less in tax revenue per year. Under FFR, Scotland would have to generate about £1,700 annually per person in tax revenue to maintain current spending. On the basis of current economic performance Scotland would be poorer by some £9bn.
Economist and newly elected SNP MSP George Kerevan was surprisingly frank when he wrote in The National that "for Scotland to accept fiscal autonomy without inbuilt UK-wide fiscal balancing would be tantamount to economic suicide.
Since FFR is as but a whisker away from independence, Kerevan’s moment of honesty may well result in an early invitation to meet with the First Minister.
However it is also a sign that a second referendum may have to await more propitious economic circumstances.