THE report of the Sustainable Growth Commission was designed to answer a direct brief from the First Minister to create a clear and ambitious prospectus for how we will transition to an independent country and build a successful future over a generation.
It does not shirk the difficult questions and seeks to provide a sound framework and straight and honest answers. In doing so it seeks a prospectus that can unify a settled will behind Scotland’s next step along our “journey without end”.
What it does not pretend to do is list every policy for every party manifesto for the elections that would follow independence. The whole point of independence is that the people of Scotland will elect their own choice of government every time and they will govern to a platform that won them the election.
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What it does do is set out a framework for how to negotiate for mutual advantage with the rest of the UK, how to manage a transition to a new country and how to secure jobs and our economic self-interest in the meantime. It also provides a vision for long-term, cross-partisan policy making that can succeed in creating a successful economy and cohesive society over a generation.
It provides, the commission believes, the necessary foundations for the new country based on principles and strategies learned from the most successful small countries in the world. It also provides, we believe, the prospectus that can win, and win big.
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It is the culmination of more than 18 months’ work based on evidence and insights from the best global experts we could find as well as from interested stakeholders in Scotland and the UK.
Scotland, we contend, has not had enough of experts.
It is a great team effort that we commend to the SNP, which commissioned the report.
I welcome the resolution that will be put forward, and it is now for party conference to now decide upon our recommendations.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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