Tory finance spokesman Gavin Brown views with horror the possibility that Scotland might diverge from the way things are done in the City of London. Following events of the last few years, Im not sure many people in Scotland would be quite so disturbed by the prospect of doing things differently. In Mr Browns remarks we see too the kind of inconsistency and contradiction that pervades Project Fear. From one side of their mouths they criticise Alex Salmond for wanting to keep things the same after independence, From the other side of their mouths drip dire warnings of the doom that awaits us if we depart in the smallest way from the exemplar of prudence and probity that is the British banking and finance sector. This also highlights the shallowness of the anti-independence argument, most of which seems to regard independence as a bad thing for no more substantive reason than that it is different. It represents change. And all change must be bad. In Gavin Browns case this takes the form of slating a regulatory regime - about which he can know nothing because it doesnt exist - solely on the basis that it just isnt British.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 09:08:17 +0000