A ROW has broken out over the SNP’s accelerated plans for a new Scottish currency as the party outlines its economic case for independence.
Critics from within the independence movement said a draft motion which will go before members at the SNP’s conference next month represented the “worst of all worlds”.
It comes after Finance Secretary Derek Mackay said higher growth after independence would cut Scotland’s £13 billion deficit and create the right conditions for a rapid switch from sterling.
He will ask the party’s conference to back moving to a new currency after independence, with an SNP government aiming to complete preparations to enable Holyrood to take a decision on this “by the end of the first term of an independent parliament”.
But former SNP MP George Kerevan said the plans “cunningly” delayed the introduction of a new currency by making the switch subject to six stringent economic tests, with an annual review to assess whether these had been met.
Writing in The National, he said this would impose a “conservative fiscal regime” on Scotland and amounted to a “muddle”, adding: “Better to write a new, more sweeping economic policy document, one that looks forward rather than backward. And dump the six tests.”
Meanwhile, Robin McAlpine, director of the Common Weal think tank, said the SNP leadership would provoke a “crisis in the independence movement” if the motion was not substantially changed and the six tests ditched.
He said the views of party members had been “entirely and utterly disregarded”, and argued the motion “categorically does not commit Scotland to having its own currency”.
The SNP’s Growth Commission indicated it would take at least a decade before a new currency was possible. However, the party’s leadership has now outlined a faster transition following pressure from activists.
Mr Mackay’s conference motion instructs the SNP’s ruling National Executive Committee to “immediately develop a campaign focused on Scotland’s economic potential as an independent country”.
It also says “an economic stimulus at the point of independence should be considered” – hinting at extra public spending or tax cuts.
Elsewhere, a separate motion backed by Edinburgh South West MP Joanna Cherry, the SNP’s justice spokeswoman in Westminster, asks party members to resolve not to repeat the mistakes of Brexit in the next independence referendum, and instead set up Citizens’ Assembles to listen to voters.
It states: “When the sovereign people of Scotland vote in that referendum there must be a clear prospectus that voters will be making their decision on. Conference therefore calls on the Scottish Parliament to enact the necessary legislation to conduct a Citizens’ Assembly exercise to listen to the people of Scotland and empower them to create their own vision of the new nation we will bring into being together.”
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