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This thread will debunk the economic propaganda of the SNP. Please read

Ask the average person in the UK (it doesn’t matter where they’re from) who has the best economic record since the Tories came to power in 2010, the Tories or the SNP?

The answer, in most cases, is

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likely to be the SNP. Even many Tories are likely to say that as well

Why would that be?

Two main reasons. Firstly. The MSM, especially the TV, is pretty much anti Tory and gives an easy ride to the SNP

Secondly. The SNP run the best propaganda campaign ever seen in the

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UK in recent years. If you absolutely believe your own propaganda (and the SNP politicians do) then it’s not too hard to convince others to believe in your propaganda either

Let’s look at the data instead of the propaganda

When looking at how well a county is doing,

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analysts look to GDP growth to make comparisons between countries. If one country is growing more over time than another country then it’s said to be doing better

Unfortunately we can’t make that comparison between Scotland and England (I am using England instead of the UK

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because the Tories run the Economy in England. They’re only partially responsible for the economies in the devolved countries as they have their own parliaments)

Scotland’s GDP is skewed by the oil industry. It adds a sizeable amount to our GDP but very little revenue

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Instead, I shall be comparing Revenues and Expenditures instead, but mainly revenues

I shall also be using per person data as it’s the most accurate way of finding out what’s happening

Guess which country has increased revenues per head the most?

Scotland? Nope

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It’s England

By a country mile, the Tories have done much much better than Scotland

Since the Tories took power in 2010 revenues per head in England have risen 17% in real terms (after inflation)

In Scotland revenues per head have only risen 3.16% in real terms

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If we go back to 2007, England’s revenues per head have risen by 9% in real terms whilst Scotland’s have fallen by 3.55%. Renember this as well. These figures for Scotland also include oil revenues of almost £50 billion. That’s an average of around £900 per person per year

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So. You an see that England has massively outperformed Scotland in raising the countries wealth, and Scotland had the advantage of high oil wealth

Let’s now go back to 1999. England was run by Labour until 2010 and by the Tories since then

So. How did it perform?

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From 1999 to 2019 England increased revenues per person by 30% in real terms

Scotland, despite oil revenues of £105bn in real terms, only increased revenues per head by c24% in real terms

Scotland’s revenues per head were higher than England’s in every year from 1999-2014

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This was solely caused by high oil revenues. Since 2014/15 England’s revenues per head are now higher than Scotland’s every year

We can now look at expenditure. Scotland spends a lot more per head than England and it has done so for years and years and years. Our

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higher expenditure is the main reason for our massive deficits. Scotland has one third of the UK landmass but only just over 8% of the population. That’s expensive to maintain

The SNP constantly complain about the austerity needed to bring down the deficit since the crash

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in 2008/09. Since the Tories came to power expenditure per person has fallen in England by 5.3% in real terms but has only fallen by 3.67% in Scotland

When the SNP complain about austerity in Scotland it was worse in England than Scotland, despite Scotland getting

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much more per person to spend than England

To summarise

England, under the Tories, has massively outperformed Scotland under the SNP, despite all the propaganda to the contrary

The SNP have shown that they are incompetent beyond measure. The billions in oil revenues

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have merely covered up their incompetence. Without that money we would have been much worse off and needed even more subsidies from England

So. The next time the SNP boasts about doing better than the Tories, show them this.

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Data used in these calculations are as follows

Fiscal balances ONS



https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommunity%2fpopulationandmigration%2fpopulationestimates%2fdatasets%2fpopulationestimatesforukenglandandwalesscotlandandnorthernireland%2fmid2019april2020localauthoritydistrictcodes/ukmidyearestimates20192020ladcodes.xls

And the actual datasets generated from the ONS data. The GDP deflator is the latest version from the OBR

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An addendum

I forgot to add the massive fiscal transfers that Scotland has received from England. Add that to the oil money

The oil money in real terms was £57bn from 2007 and £105bn from 1999

Fiscal transfers were c£63bn from 2007 and c£89bn from 1999 (real terms)

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Updated dataset to include the oil revenues for Scotland.

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All the datasets used in the above thread

https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2feconomy%2fgovernmentpublicsectorandtaxes%2fpublicsectorfinance%2fdatasets%2fcountryandregionalpublicsectorfinancesnetfiscalbalancetables%2ffinancialyearending2019/netfiscalbalance.xlsx

Revenues and Expenditure

https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommunity%2fpopulationandmigration%2fpopulationestimates%2fdatasets%2fpopulationestimatesforukenglandandwalesscotlandandnorthernireland%2fmid2019april2020localauthoritydistrictcodes/ukmidyearestimates20192020ladcodes.xls

Population stats

https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/PSF_aggregates_databank_May.xlsx

The latest OBR databank. Inc the GDP deflator

https://twitter.com/edglasgow59/status/1262077042411126786?s=12

Fiscal transfers explained https://twitter.com/edglasgow59/status/1262077042411126786