Most people by now are aware that Scotland is having a referendum on September 18th 2014 to decide whether or not she wants to leave the United Kingdom and become a separate country. Technically, Scotland wouldn't actually leave the UK because this country was created in 1707 when Scottish and English parliaments both passed Acts of Union dissolving their respective parliaments and forming a Parliament of Great Britian, based in Westminster (I'm trusting Wikipedia on this), so repealing the Act of Union would re-establish both Scotland and England as separate countries. I think. I'm not a lawyer. And I wonder what this would mean for Wales and Northern Ireland - would they become English colonies? I just read that Wales formally entered a Union with England a few hundred years after the English conquest.
Anyway, sorry, I'm havering. Technicalities of what to call the new countries is not what I want to talk about. During the independence debate, the Scottish Government has been declaring that all will be easy and sunny in a new Scotland, whilst the no campaign has been focusing on trying to terrorise the Scottish people into being too scared to quit the union. The last couple of years have been filled with scare stories from the UK government and "independent" think-tanks, detailing how much poorer Scotland would be after independence.
As I'm a scientist and like to play with numbers and spreadsheets (hey, everyone needs a hobby!), I decided to trawl through some of the media statements and reports by people like the UK Treasury, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, etc, and added up all their claims of how much independence will cost Scotland. Caveats time: it's a public holiday and I'm going to make a cake soon for Dom, so I only spent 20 minutes Googling and skimming media reports. Therefore the true total cost of Project Fear could be significantly higher. However, everything here is from an attributable comment made in a mainstream media outlet (BBC, Guardian, Scotsman but not the Daily Mail) or in a published report or policy document. Wanna see my data?
| Who | What | When | How much? |
| Hague & Alexander | Extra EU contributions | 18-Jan-14 | £3,800,000,000 |
| Danny Alexander | Chilcare costs | 17-Dec-13 | £1,640,000,000 |
| IFS / Alexander | Aging population and reduced oil revenue | 26-Nov-13 | £3,000,000,000 |
| IFS | Reducing debt to 40% GDP | 18-Nov-13 | £6,000,000,000 |
| IFS | Matching UK spending cuts to 2016 | 29-Oct-13 | £2,500,000,000 |
| Alistair Darling | Extra borrowing costs for Scottish Government | 27-Nov-13 | £9,000,000,000 |
| Philip Hammond | Loss of defence spending to shipbuilding | 08-Oct-13 | £1,800,000,000 |
| Scottish Global Forum | Running a new military | 13-Nov-13 | £2,500,000,000 |
| John Swinney | Extra costs of collecting taxes | leaked paper | £312,500,000 |
| Total ANNUAL costs | £30,552,500,000 |
In graphical form (because everyone loves graphs):
Disclaimer: I would never use such garish colours in a scientific publication, so this is the only chance I get to make hideously-coloured, non-colour-blind-friendly graphs. Don't judge me.
These data do not take into account any start-up costs for establishing new embassies, building a new military, etc. Indeed, Rory Stewart, Tory MP and former Foreign Office diplomat, claimed that setting up secure communications systems for embassies would alone cost "billions'.
Obviously, no-one from the No Campaign has tried to claim that being an independent country would cost Scotland more than £30bn a year extra, especially given that the annual budget for the Scottish Government is £28.6bn. But if you tally up even a small sample of the claims being made by Better Together, then this is the number you get at. While each scare story in the media may sound plausible on its own, adding it all together demonstrates just how ridiculous Project Fear is getting.
