Killer arguments and estimated numbers

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It’s not at all clear that the report on the ‘fiscal deficit’ for Wales by Professor John Doyle (available here) is quite the game-changer as which Plaid have tried to present it. It no more ‘proves’ that an independent Wales would be financially viable than any figures quoted previously have ‘proved’ that it would not be. The Tory leader, a man who has never knowingly issued a press release that doesn’t ‘slam’ somebody or other for something or other, has ‘slammed’ the report and all associated with it. That was entirely predictable which means that it can be easily discounted, but that would be premature for reasons to which we will return shortly. The chief sins for which the report has been duly ‘slammed’ seem to be the fact that the report’s author has dared to assume that an independent Wales might actually do anything different rather than simply replicate UK policy, and that there is more than one way to prepare a guesstimate. A country of 3 million behaving as though it were a country of 3 million is a truly horrific crime against economics, apparently. Imagining a different future is something with which his limited imagination just can’t cope.

The report does tell us a number of things:

·        The numbers prepared previously by the Office of National Statistics setting out the fiscal position of Wales within the UK are unfit for the purposes of assessing the financial situation of an independent Wales;

·        Those numbers are based on some assumptions and estimates which may not be entirely correct; and

·        Preparing estimates on the basis of different assumptions gives different answers.

It’s all useful stuff, but anyone who’s been paying attention knew all that anyway, even without a learned professor putting his name to it. The obvious conclusion – that the financial position of an independent Wales would probably be broadly comparable with the financial position of any similarly-sized country – is so blindingly obvious that it shouldn’t even need to be stated. When it comes to the economics, there is nothing special or unique about Wales; nothing which condemns us to be poorer than any similar country and nothing which makes us an unviable basket case, and any suggestion that there is has been based on a set of estimates and assumptions specifically designed to demonstrate precisely that.

That does, though, brings us back to why it would be premature to dismiss the Tories’ response, just because it is economic nonsense. There are, of course, some people who aspire to see an independent Wales but are worried about the finances, and who may therefore be swayed by this sort of report. However, I suspect that group is actually quite small. No matter what any ‘game-changing’ report might say, no matter how strong the evidence, no matter how well the case is put, those with closed minds cannot and will not engage in debate around the true economics of independence, and will prefer to double down on a claim that ‘my expert estimates trump your expert estimates’, no matter how utterly discredited (or rather, in this case, irrelevant to the context) they may be. People who don’t want Wales to be independent cannot imagine how it ever could be, and that subset of the population isn’t limited to members and supporters of the Conservative and Unionist Party. They may hide behind their precious numbers and exaggerated deficits, but the idea that their objections are simply financial is nothing more than a pretence to avoid debating why Wales should not become an independent country. Trying to persuade them to accept a different set of numbers implies that there is a willingness to debate the issue if only the financial objections can be removed. It’s a fool’s errand: there is no such willingness.

In truth, none of us knows what the detailed financial implications of independence would be – but then what the unionists never admit is that neither do we know the detailed financial implications of continuing in the union. The future is shaped by events which have yet to happen and decisions which have yet to be taken and is essentially unknowable. In the absence of any credible reason why Wales, uniquely in the world, should be incapable of running its own affairs (and opponents of independence have yet to come up with such a credible reason), the logical and rational assumption to make is that Wales is as capable as any other similar country. We can do it if we want to. The real question is whether or not we want to – and carefully worked out sums can never answer that question.