Scotland's First Minister launches "A Fresh Start for Independence"
First Minister John Swinney will held a press conference at the National Galleries of Scotland: Portrait on Wednesday 8 October, following the publication of a paper about Scotland’s constitutional future.
‘A Fresh Start with Independence’ will set out key policy proposals for an independent Scotland, detailing how the country could thrive and grow through independence.
00:00Hello, I'm Alistair Grant, the political editor of The Scotsman. I'm here just outside the National Poetrait Gallery in Edinburgh where First Minister John Swinney has been launching the latest in the Scottish Government's building a new Scotland series of independence papers.
00:13He was giving a speech this morning. This is the paper, A Fresh Start for Independence. I can just go to the contents pages and it's basically a kind of prospectus for the Scottish Government's view of independence.
00:24There's sections on how Scotland would become independent, what the public finances would be, what Scotland's currency would be. Would Scotland rejoin the European Union?
00:33This is all very familiar stuff that we've heard a lot about in the past.
00:38There's stuff about the kind of border checks that might be required between Scotland and England.
00:42England, of course, being outside of the EU, if Scotland's rejoined as an independent country.
00:47There's stuff about joining NATO. Would Scotland have nuclear weapons?
00:50And to be honest, this is just a, this document is just a collection of things that we have heard before, put into the one document.
00:59Stuff like, you know, its policy in NATO. It wants to join NATO as an independent country, but it also wants to get rid of Scotland's nuclear weapons.
01:08Nuclear weapons are held in Scotland. Maybe there's many people who would raise an eyebrow at whether NATO would be happy with that.
01:14There's stuff about the kind of border checks with England, as I mentioned, that admits there would be checks.
01:20It talks about setting up a new government agency, government body to deal with that.
01:24I think the truth of this document is that this is really party management ahead of the SNP confidence, which is kicking off this weekend.
01:31There doesn't feel like any urgency here. There's no real detail in this document.
01:35There's nothing about timeframes. It talks about initially using pound sterling in an independent country before moving after a period of time to a separate Scottish currency.
01:45But there's no detail about how long that would take. There's no detail about how long it might take to join the EU.
01:50So, as I say, very much feels like party management.
01:53It feels like it's talking to the party as opposed to a kind of a serious document that's been written with the expectation that an independence referendum will be held anytime soon.
02:03But John Sweeney, effectively saying, basing part of his argument on the fact that he was saying that there was a promise of higher living standards after people voted no in 2014,
02:13he's saying that that failed to materialise. So promises have been broken.
02:17He was also, quite interestingly, in the conversation he had afterwards with journalists from Scotland's newspapers,
02:24saying that devolution effectively is reaching or has reached its limits in Scotland.
02:30So he's saying that independence is the next logical step.
02:33I think that line that devolution has reached its limits in Scotland is quite an interesting thing for the First Minister to say,
02:39particularly if he's going into the Holyrood election next year and hoping to continue as Scotland's First Minister.
02:45You can read more about this document from the politics team on the Scotsman's website.
02:49Please stay tuned to that website for all the latest news, comment and analysis.
02:52And there's loads of other articles as well about what's going on in Scottish politics.
02:56Please stay tuned to that website for all the latest news.
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