Salmond sets out his stall

THOSE who attended the launch of Scotland’s independence campaign on November 26th might have failed to detect any evidence of national oppression. No police checked their papers. Nor, if they wandered farther to shops bristling with tartanalia and blasting bagpipe music, was there much sign of a suppressed culture struggling to express itself.

A speech by Alex Salmond, Scotland’s nationalist first minister, was long on management-speak. Searching for a visionary quote to headline, the best the Herald, a nationalist-leaning Glasgow broadsheet, could produce was: “We do not seek independence as an end in itself, but as a means to change Scotland for the better.” The document that Mr Salmond unveiled, a 667-page plan for independence, was more like a corporate prospectus for a share offering than a blood-tingling cry for freedom.

Strange, because a referendum on Scottish independence will be held next September. With opinion polls showing that Scotland is leaning against breaking free from the rest of the United Kingdom, the document is Mr Salmond’s big chance to turn things around. But “Scotland’s Future”, as it is titled, reveals a fundamental problem with the independence pitch. Contemporary Scotland is neither so successful that it can clearly afford to go it alone, nor so impoverished that it has much to rail against.

Mr Salmond aims to convince Scots that prosperity will flow from breaking a 307-year-old political union. But Scotland’s economy is not exactly stuck in a cul-de-sac. As “Scotland’s Future” boasts, output per head in Scotland is 99% of the British average and the highest in the kingdom outside London and the south-east, even before North Sea oil and gas are considered. An independent nation would struggle not because output is low but because public spending is so high.

And the toolkit that Mr Salmond offers to build a better economy resembles a set of jeweller’s screwdrivers. He promises Scandinavian-style full-time child care to get more women into work, a bigger employment-tax break for small businesses and cuts to corporation tax and air passenger duty. Business organisations were dubious. Where is the accelerator? griped Scottish Engineering, a trade body. Modelling indicates that a corporation-tax rate three percentage points lower than elsewhere in Britain could raise output by 1.4% and create 27,000 jobs—but only after 20 years, and assuming competing tax cuts do not wipe out the Scottish advantage.

Gnarly economic questions remain unanswered—some, indeed, may be impossible to answer in the next year. With North Sea oil drying up, for example, nationalist hopes for a new industrial future rest on renewable energy. Mr Salmond claims investment in this industry amounted to £13.1 billion ($21.3 billion) between 2010 and 2013. Scotland exports between a fifth and a quarter of the electricity it produces, much of that from renewables. But the success of this industry depends on consumers in the rest of Britain continuing to shell out for expensive green power—something that is looking less and less likely.

This is but one of a myriad of items Mr Salmond will have to negotiate agreement on to construct his new Scotland. He would also have to negotiate EU membership, continued use of sterling, the division of Britain’s national debt, NATO membership and much else besides. Voting for independence would be an act of faith.

Robert Young of the University of Western Ontario, an expert on secession movements, reckons that Mr Salmond needs to increase the emotional pull of independence. He is good with symbolic dates. Next year’s referendum is 700 years on from the battle of Bannockburn, a famed victory over the English by Robert the Bruce. The planned date of independence—March 24th 2016—coincides with the anniversaries of the 1603 Union of the Crowns and the 1707 Act of Union.

Yet next year also brings a British heartstring-tugger: the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the first world war. Glasgow Cathedral will host the main church service. Oddly, says John Curtice, a psephologist, surveys show that support for independence does not grow much as the strength of Scottish identity intensifies. But opposition rises sharply as the sense of Britishness increases: independence, after all, means the end of Britain.

With an emotional draw likely, the referendum will be a fight over the benefits and costs of independence. There, Mr Salmond is still short of a winning hand.