Here's what the Scottish Currency Group has planned for 2024

Rather than turkey with all the trimmings, we got a rotting carcass of ungrammatical, badly written text, which Unionist vultures quickly ripped apart – a preview of the campaign proper.

As we recently reminded the Scottish Government, the politically naïve policy of using sterling after the transition to independence is also economically risky. We continue to believe that preparations for a Scottish Central Bank should start now to mitigate these risks.

But that was last year. We can now thank the SNP’s leadership team for taking the time to remind us of the limited scope of its aspirations – and reliance on out-of-date thinking – and turn to the broader independence movement for the development of the robust strategy which Scotland needs.

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To begin the year, the Scottish Currency Group will prepare a paper on the challenges of planning for, and introducing, a new currency for the Independence Forum Scotland.

This will seek to counter the lack of ambition afflicting the SNP’s leadership. It will outline a raft of government policies which could “shift the dial” on support for independence.

Independence Day would be when the Scottish Central Bank begins to use the Scottish pound to pursue these policies.

Looking forward a few months, the currency group plans to convene a major international conference to start building a broad policy platform. This is not about some obscure, technical issue – having our own currency will be critical for designing policies to address current priorities such as the NHS, the cost of living crisis, housing problems, and climate change. Currency is critical to the working of every modern economy.

But we also need to learn from history. An early Scottish economist, John Law, became intoxicated with the possibilities of paper money in the early 18th century. Able to test his theories that issuing paper money would automatically increase wealth, he presided over a financial bubble, high inflation, and then inevitable collapse.

Liz Truss (below) and Kwasi Kwarteng were pretty much his direct intellectual descendants. Their influence was similarly brief.

We know that a Scottish pound is not a silver bullet. To be effective, money needs to be directed through the economy to increase the long-term capacity of the Scottish economy, not used for short-term fixes.

One objective of the currency group conference will be to understand the policy options more fully as we take account of the changing nature of money.

In the 18th century, paper money was a radical new idea. Today’s challenges will involve managing digital money. Instead of notes and coins, today’s monetary system consists largely of an electronic record of account balances at banks and other financial institutions, and a set of messaging systems allowing the transfer of money between those bank accounts.

It is important that there is a better understanding across the independence movement of how to design the institutions of such a modern monetary system so they support Scotland’s social and economic development and, perhaps even more importantly, so they are robust enough to prevent damaging spurts of growth and economic collapse.

This conference should provide a springboard for the next stage of the group’s work. Talk is important, but now is the time for action to secure Scotland’s independence.

The Scottish Currency Group believes that the broader independence movement needs to demonstrate not only that it has identified the inevitable challenges which will come with independence, but also that it is now preparing to address them.

Certainty about how Scotland will manage its currency will be an important part of re-assuring those who want to achieve independence, but who fear that it cannot be done easily. Solid preparations on currency and other matters should make independence seem like a small step, rather than a leap in the dark.

Many central banks, including the Bank of England, began as private, rather than public, institutions.

As a devolved administration, the Scottish Government will not be able to make progress on setting up a central bank.

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That is why it falls to the Scottish Currency Group to begin the work needed to establish a Scottish Monetary Research Institute as a precursor to a central bank.

By designing systems, and identifying key people who will provide the Central Bank’s leadership after independence, the Scottish Monetary Research Institute will be in a strong position to answer questions on how the government of the new country will be able to finance its spending programmes.

While there will be plenty of conversation at the conference, it will initiate a change in direction for the Scottish Currency Group, the independence movement, and for Scotland.