What the pandemic has done is to make the question of Scotland's share of the UK's ballooning government debt paramount in any future calculation of the viability of independence. In particular, Scotland would no longer be the recipient of Barnett largesse; under the UK Treasury's Barnett formula, Whitehall currently funnels to the Edinburgh government an extra £1,900 per head each year above English norms. If only the "political surge" had come sooner, or the "oil discoveries" had happened later, when the SNP had become the Scottish party of government, then independence could have made Scotland, with prudent governance, almost as rich as Norway. [Extracted from the article]
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