Five more ways Nicola Sturgeon has failed Scotland

#2 Nationalism isn’t working

Despite historic investment of over £10bn by the UK Government to intervene in the economy and throw a protective safety net around workers during the unprecedented impact of COVID-19, Scotland’s unemployment rate sits at 4.6%, way in excess of the other parts of the United Kingdom (England checks out at 3.9%, Wales 3%, and Northern Ireland leads, with only 2.3% of workers out of a job).

This is after factoring in just over 628,000 jobs in Scotland have been protected by the UK Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which begs the question, exactly how bad would things be if Scotland had split from the rest of the UK? 

The finances demonstrate an independent Scotland wouldn’t have had the financial means to pay for these support measures – the UK’s being one of the most generous in the world – and wouldn’t have had a lender of last resort to ensure the Government was able to even borrow the money if it so chose.

Remember, it was the SNP’s official position to unilaterally continue using the Pound Sterling as the official currency of an independent Scotland. There’s a global pandemic on, and we need to throw an arm around our workers?  Sure, let’s phone a foreign power’s central bank to ask if we can write out a blank cheque in their currency…