Scotland On Sunday has a very odd front-page splash today.
In a truly remarkable feat of sheer journalistic incompetence, the paper’s Tom Peterkin manages to cover three pages discussing the idea of an independent Scotland renting the Faslane naval base to the UK without once even mentioning the two very recent opinion polls conducted on that exact subject, on both sides of what would in those circumstances be the international border.
But that’s not the weirdest bit.
What’s weird is that retired “former SNP defence adviser” Lt-Col Stuart Crawford, who readers may recall, has apparently reached the entirely logical conclusion that such an arrangement would be the most pragmatic solution for all parties to the problem posed by the nuclear weapons system after independence, but has – seemingly unilaterally – decided to give the base away for peanuts.
We don’t know what sort of education Crawford had, but it clearly didn’t cover the fine art of negotiating. We already know from our first poll that the English public would be willing – by a margin of almost two to one – to pay at least FIVE billion pounds a year to rent Faslane, and most Scots are onboard with the idea at that price, but only a third would be happy to host the submarines on the cheap.
And given that the rUK’s negotiating position would be even weaker than the one it currently wields with the EU – there is nowhere else for Trident to possibly go – it’s extremely difficult to imagine why on Earth the Scottish Government would ever agree to such a poor bargain.
The only rational assessment is that Crawford’s “estimate” is the first attempt to set the parameters of a process which clearly terrifies the UK establishment. Were a more realistic settlement for such a deal to be factored into the economic debate around independence – on top of the radical redrawing that Brexit already represents – then a Yes vote would increasingly obviously become the smart financial move, as well as a compelling ideological principle.
That, we suspect, is why both Stuart Crawford and Tom Peterkin want to get a head start on trying to define this particular debate in a frame that minimises the possible benefits of independence, and why they’re so determinedly turning a blind eye to both established facts and blindingly obvious logic to do so.
It’s not the most obvious illustration of the absolute panic the Unionists are currently gripped by, but it’s perhaps one of the most revealing.
