This is why Scotland is better off without the UK's economic mess

The downturn figure for the US is actually half that of the UK - despite the high American death toll – indicating the British economy is uniquely vulnerable in the aftermath of Brexit. In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, the OECD forecast for the COVID-19 hit is only slightly larger than for the 2009 recession following the banking crisis. Germany is in a position to recover quickly, limiting Britain’s hand in the Brexit trade negotiations. It might even suit the German’s to abandon the complex supply chains linking the UK and continental car industries, switching assembly back to the mainland.

READ MORE: UK economy will be worst hit in developed world, OECD warns

What are the prospects for Scotland and independence if the OECD “dire” projections are correct? Assuming there is no second outbreak, the OECD thinks the global economy won’t return to normal for at least two years. Average unemployment will jump to nearly 10 per cent. If there is a second bout of Covid-19, the economy will be in the doldrums for much of the decade. Which means that any second IndyRef (assuming there is one) will take place against a background of recession, unemployment and falling living standards.

The Scottish economy is particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 shocks in the hospitality and tourism industry, and in oil. There is little chance of the travel industry retuning to normal any time soon, despite the lifting of restriction announced by Fergus Ewing. A prolonged downturn in the global economy will reduce the demand for oil. Expect the Unionist argument against independence to warn that leaving the UK market at such a time will be suicidal.

Yet there’s another way of looking at the new reality. The fact that the UK may suffer worse economically than other countries proves that Scotland is chained to a partner that is not fit for purpose. Industry has been side-lined in favour of a cowboy financial system that manufactures nothing but consumer debt. Britain’s vaunted car industry is composed of screwdriver plants bolting together parts made in Europe. What better time, then, for Scotland to seek a divorce from the City of London, the world’s biggest tax haven.

Instead, let’s create a people-centred economy. One based on human need, sustainability, fairness, and local security. Let’s reframe the independence debate around self-reliance rather than on endless, precarious growth. Let’s build warm, affordable houses rather than prioritise developers’ and landlords’ profits. Let’s grow food for local consumption rather allowing foreign agribusiness to poison our land and seas. Let’s visit Scotland ourselves rather than let Metropolitan profiteers dig up Princes Street Gardens. To paraphrase the immortal words of Jimmy Reid, the rat race is for rats - and we’re not rats.

READ MORE: Scottish tourism industry could restart on July 15

Shifting the axis of the independence debate will not be easy. For decades, the SNP’s pitch has been that indy would make us magically richer. Sometimes the promise was explicit (viz. a North Sea oil bonanza); sometimes it was implicit (viz. higher growth). Typically, the Unionists reply in chorus that indy will make us all poorer, Scots being uniquely stupid and feckless. Even the virus has been weaponised. Witness Murdo Fraser’s latest squib that an independent Scotland could not have funded the COVID-19 crisis, even though other small European countries are outspending the UK proportionately.

Yet Mr Fraser cannot hide the fact that the post-covid UK economy is in worse shape than anybody else’s. That Scotland is tied to the UK’s sinking economic ship. That the whole leaky boat is being captained a genuinely feckless prime minister and his crazy special advisor. The answer is surely independence and quick. But the purpose of that independence can no longer be to replicate in miniature the sort of economy that is malfunctioning everywhere, and in spectacular fashion in the UK.

Already there many voices across Scotland advocating a different model: the Scottish Degrowth Commission, the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (spearheaded by that force of nature Katherine Trebeck); and Common Weal, whose blueprint for a new, “resilience” economics has just been published. The truth is this: post-covid the world is going to be poorer and the UK especially so. Yet Scotland is not poor in any absolute sense. We have an abundance of natural resources and human creativity which most countries on the planet would die for. All we have to do is use them. That requires one thing: an independent state to free our ambitions and our energies.