It's the economy, stupid

I thought that the chat over lunch with a friend before the Scotland/Serbia game on Saturday would be more about Craig Levin's team selection rather than a run through the latest but significant happenings in Scottish politics. But, strangely, conversation was dominated by the world of politics. I can’t say we agreed on everything, but we did agree that the whole referendum debate is turning people off. Even as people who are into politics, we don't fancy another two years of this. People are disengaged because no politician, party or either of the campaigns wants to talk about the real and contentious issues – where are the big policies? The fact is, we’ll most likely see people make their decision based on the state of the economy – much like the upcoming US election. As always: it will be the economy stupid. But where is the debate on which economic model Scotland should be adopting? What are we going to do about our continuing marginal growth rates? How can we create jobs? In his David Hume lecture John Swinney laid out the SNP vision for the economy - a fairly traditional economic model, which you could argue has failed us over the past 5 years. It had nothing on the well-being agenda, building on the likes of Oxfam's Humankind Index, utilising our natural capital ie. - our people and environment - or using Joseph Stiglitz 's work, despite him being an economic advisor to the government. Equally I don’t see any ideas from the opposition parties to revive our declining economy. And the political 'debate' around the budget in the coming months will be marginal and frankly meaningless – over millions rather than billions of pounds. If MSPs really want to engage the rest of us in the referendum debate they need to ask themselves why, despite all the talk of doing things differently, the budget and spend of the main departments at the Scottish Government remains the same. If we really are to start doing things differently we will need to start by approaching the economy differently. Until we do that it is just more of the same old same old. If you are going to start your campaigns on Scotland’s future 2 years out from the referendum then at least don’t be afraid to face up to the fact you need a real full and frank debate with the Scottish people.