FMQ sketch: Oh, how he must have wished for ‘rain stopped play’

[Alastair]

From the Scotsman
By TOM PETERKIN
Published on Friday 1 June 2012 00:00

HAD Alex Salmond been bowling in a cricket match, he would have been taken off after his opening over, such was the ease with which Johann Lamont whacked him all over the Holyrood chamber yesterday.

But, unlike cricket, where an off-form bowler can be replaced before too much damage is inflicted on the team, there is no hiding place for an off-colour party leader at First Minister’s Questions.

So it was that Salmond was forced to plough through raucous laughter from the Labour benches as he struggled to answer what Lamont described as “basic questions about simple economics in an independent Scotland”.

His difficulties originated in a televised debate at the weekend when his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, declared an independent Scotland would retain sterling and would have a seat on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (MPC). When challenged to produce details of the agreement that would see a Scottish voice on the MPC, Salmond was reduced to a waffling wreck – a response that led Lamont to accurately conclude that no such deal was in place.

The best Salmond could do was claim Lamont’s suggestion that the country would not be represented on the MPC after independence was a sign of a “remarkably diminished view of Scotland”.

But there was no disguising his failure to come up with any decent evidence to suggest that the matter had even been raised with the Bank of England. And Lamont effortlessly batted away what has become the stock SNP response to anyone who dares find fault with independence – namely, that picking a hole in the SNP’s argument amounts to “talking Scotland down”.

In a withering reply, Lamont countered: “It is all about assertion and belief and hope. The problem is, of course, the First Minister thinks an independent Scotland would have influence on the monetary policy committee – we don’t have influence now but we will have somehow when Scotland is a foreign country. It does simply beggar belief.”

By now the normally buoyant SNP benches were looking crestfallen as their Labour opponents cackled at the First Minister’s obvious discomfort when he claimed his ramblings represented “a grown-up attitude to how you conduct government”.

That ball was despatched to the boundary with a flourish, as Lamont retorted: “I’ve always told my children it’s not grown-up just to cross your fingers and hope for the best.”

By now Salmond was referring to something he christened the “sterling-zone” – a concept that seemed also to amuse Labour MSPs, who have waited a long time for the SNP leader to make, as the Tory leader Ruth Davidson later put it, a “Horlicks” of First Minister’s Questions.

There was to be no respite for the First Minister when Willie Rennie of the Lib Dems stood up and criticised the SNP’s “bulldozer approach” to centralising Scotland’s police forces.

In his answer, Salmond admitted he was “still trying to work out what this bulldozer thing is”.

It was at that point one gnarled veteran in the press gallery couldn’t resist whispering: “That’s what just ran you over, Alex.”

[Caledonian]

Re: FMQ sketch: Oh, how he must have wished for ‘rain stopped play’

This article is a total misrepresentation of the exchange between Lamont and Salmond. The reality is that the exchange shows how little grasp Johann Lamont has of the status of the Bank of England now and its possible make-up, status and remit in the event of Scottish independence.

First of all the Bank of England is not an English bank, it is a UK bank. Although it is independent of Government its function is to act as the UK governments’ bank. The laws that govern it will cease to exist when Scotland becomes independent since the government it was created to the bank for will cease to exist.

A proportion of its reserves and assets, that’s between 8% and 13%, depending on which figures are used to determine the allocation, is Scottish. The share of the liabilities which will fall to Scotland will be only those that can be shown to be directly attributable to matters relating to, or concerning, Scotland.

Secondly, if the Remnant UK refuses to adopt a financial partnership somewhere along the lines proposed by the SNP the only alternative would be for Scotland to create its own central bank in Edinburgh as bankers to the Scottish government. This would be disastrous for the B of E which is barely managing to keep afloat at the moment without loans guaranteed by Scottish oil revenue. London as an international financial centre would cease to exist. The sacrificing, over several decades, of the UK manufacturing base in preference for financial services, would have all been for nothing.

The solution that the UK government is presently trying to get the Euro-zone countries to adopt is for the European Central Bank to raise funds from the stronger economies, create a reserve, that can then be used to fund or subsidise the weaker economies..

The UK is not in the Euro-zone and is determined to remain outside of it, but it still insists that only by remaining united can those countries in the Euro-zone at present overcome their difficulties, and also, it still contributes independently and as a member of the IMF and the World Bank to the European Central Bank and the above mentioned fund.

The fragility of the economies of the UK, Europe and the world in general are such that the splitting up of the EU and its financial institutions has got everybody worried half to death. Welcoming speculation on UK economic issues by the markets at this time is not economically wise and this is what Lamont is encouraging with scant regard for the possible consequences.

Any decision by a London government to jeopardise the status of the B of E, now or at a future date, would be suicidal for England. What sort of signals would they be sending out to the markets if open speculation as to its future became rife? Salmond understands this, thence his proposal to make a stable Sterling currency the currency of an independent Scotland. He also understands that speculation would also be economically counter-productive to the UK economy (of which we are still a part) at this stage. This is why saying too much at this stage is not advisable, but rest assured, Scotland is in a good bargaining position.