Michael Russell: 'Too poor, too wee, too stupid' claim resurfaces

And my own little uncontroversial contribution to the ether – a modest assertion on Twitter that Scotland is clearly not too wee, too poor or too stupid to be independent – drew a pompous official ministerial challenge from wee Dougie Ross, supported by a noisy gaggle of near hysterical Tory MSPs and the lugubrious failed Labour candidate Blair McDougall.

I have the greatest of respect for the fact-checking team at The Ferret and won’t pick a fight with them but I do not resile from my general argument. Scotland isn’t poor but this week proved beyond a doubt that those whose careers depend on the Union want to fatally undermine our national self-confidence by insisting it is.

Winning that argument will, they believe, crush under a weight of inadequacy and despair any ambition by Scotland to be a normal nation.

For that to happen it is also essential that any problem or issue, which elsewhere would be taken in the national stride and sorted by those actually responsible, is in Scotland immediately pointed to as the fault of the Scottish Government, and particularly an SNP government.

Bridge icing is a perfect example.

Globally it is a recognised civil engineering concern but in Scotland it has happened because, apparently, SNP ministers, have in some unspecified way culpably (either from deliberate action or careless inaction) commissioned a major thoroughfare that suffers from the problem, even though virtually every cable-stay bridge in the world struggles with the same issue.

For bridges read hospitals, schools, roads – everything is bad because it is done in Scotland, by Scots. That is the “too stupid” part. The “too wee” part is taken care of by doing everything possible to frustrate Scotland speaking directly to the world or being treated as an equal in these islands. Instead Unionists assert that the voice of Scotland is not that of its elected government, but is only heard when a Tory speaks – though the Tories haven’t won an election in Scotland in more than half a century.

But the “too poor” bit is the lynch pin of the whole sorry argument. Persuade Scots that they simply couldn’t afford to run a normal country and the whole independence game would be, they think, a-bogey. It was the key No platform in 2014 and it is at the forefront of their approach again.

Most people hunger for certainty and the UK Government presents its very dodgy case as if it was unimpeachable. That gave them the edge in the first indyref but it mustn’t be allowed to continue into the second. The momentary snapshot of current alleged dependence that is GERS of course allows the UK Government to pretend to be authoritative on this particular issue. But GERS needs to be put in a wider context, and one that includes common sense as well as modern scholarship.

The modern scholarship can be seen in assessments of, for example, the financial drain that colonialism imposed on India – which is only now beginning to be fully understood. Some of that work is admittedly about historic issues but it is urgently needed.

The common sense is easier. I don’t for a moment believe that the UK Government is a philanthropic organisation and therefore the argument that, out of a generous sense of duty, it is subsidising Scotland year in, year out should cut no ice with anyone.

And finally, how does the whole thing look? It may be that Tom Stoppard invented that famous story about Wittgenstein, but it is always worth stopping to consider the point it raises.

“Tell me,” Wittgenstein is alleged to have said to a friend. “Why do people always say that it was natural for us to assume that the sun went around the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?”

His friend replied: “Well, obviously, because it just looks as if the sun is going around the earth.”

The philosopher said: “Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth was rotating?”

So what would it look like if England was indeed subsidised by Scotland? Probably very much as it looks now.