Шотландия должна выпускать облигации для своих граждан, а не только для международных инвесторов

THE Scottish Government is expected to issue its first bond later this year or early next year. I have no objection to that. Governments should borrow to fund investment, and Scotland should use the borrowing powers available to it. My concern is with the assumption that it should be sold through the wholesale financial markets, because that is simply how governments are expected to borrow. Scotland can do better than that. The stated aims of this bond issue are to demonstrate that Scotland is a credible borrower and to win the confidence of institutional investors. That is what any conventional financial adviser would recommend but what interests me is whether Scotland wants its first significant financial act to be so conventional, and whether it wants its economic credibility to depend on the approval of institutions with no stake in the country beyond a return. READ MORE: Racism and sexism 'forcing some women out of public life' in Scotland For as long as independence has been desired, the case has been about more than moving powers from Westminster to Holyrood. Independence has always been about the chance to build a different kind of country, capable of standing on its own rather than deferring to others for permission. If that is the ambition, proving Scotland’s ability to fund itself from its own people’s savings, rather than from savings made elsewhere, is not a side issue. It is close to the whole point. A wholesale bond assumes the first relationship Scotland should build is with financial markets. I understand the appeal. But a nation that begins by asking markets for validation is a nation that has already conceded where authority over it sits. A nation that begins by asking its own citizens to invest is making a different claim – that it can provide for itself. That claim is not just rhetorical. A country that can raise a meaningful share of its borrowing from its own population is less exposed to the moods of international financial markets and rating agencies, and to demands from investors who have no reason to care whether Scotland thrives. Dependency on external capital is not a neutral technical fact. It is a form of vulnerability. A retail bond programme, built up over the years to come, is one way to reduce that vulnerability rather than deepen it at the first opportunity. That is important because the assumptions of modern finance have not served Scotland well to date. For 40 years, we have been told that savings belong to markets rather than to society and are commodities traded globally in search of yield, disconnected from any sense of what they actually fund. As a result, most people have no idea where their pension or ISA savings end up. The link between the use of savings and the country in which they occur has all but disappeared. Savings, though, are not just accumulated wealth. They are both deferred consumption and a bet that tomorrow is worth planning for, which makes them part of a country’s social capital, and not merely a private asset. A government that draws directly on that capital is not just raising money. It is demonstrating that the country can sustain itself from within, rather than relying on the goodwill of external capital drawn from international markets. This also changes how we should think about borrowing itself. A government with its own currency (as an independent Scotland must have) does not need to secure savings before it can spend – it spends first and borrows for other reasons, whether to offer safe assets to its own financial markets, support financial stability or give people somewhere secure to put their money. READ MORE: Stephen Flynn tasked with bringing in SNP supermarket food price cap plans So the real question is not whether Scotland might persuade institutional investors to buy its debt, because we know they will. It is why Scottish citizens are not being offered the first chance to fund their own government right now and, in doing so, prove the country can stand on its own feet. That is why I think the Scottish Government should begin with a retail bond, a Scottish Savings Bond, paying a fair rate linked to the Bank of England base rate, open to Scottish households as a genuinely safe place to save. Wholesale borrowing has its place, and Scotland may use it in time, but this is the moment to define the savings relationship between a future Scottish state and the people who will support it, who are the people of the country. A few hundred pounds from one saver, several thousand from another – these savings are what can build this relationship. The amounts will matter less than the fact that people have chosen to invest in Scotland itself. Nations are built through participation as much as through constitutions and elections. A citizen with money in a Scottish Savings Bond has a direct stake in whether the country succeeds, and by saving in this way provides evidence that Scotland does not need outside capital to get going. That is a different relationship from being a taxpayer or a voter. It is being a stakeholder in the country’s future, with a personal reason to want the venture to work. And that builds the pathway to independence, which is precisely why those bonds would succeed. That participation could be further sharpened by linking the bonds to national priorities from which savers might choose. There could be housing bonds, renewable energy bonds, care bonds, NHS bonds, education bonds. Each would be issued to a limit to reflect government priorities. But the names would matter and would fund whatever they describe, telling savers what kind of country they are helping build, thereby reinforcing the idea that the country’s capacity comes from its own people rather than from a syndicate of banks in London or Frankfurt. There is a precedent for this. Britain once encouraged people to save directly with the government through National Savings. Millions of people held Savings Certificates and Premium Bonds not because the returns were exceptional, but because the arrangement felt like a straightforward, trustworthy way to put money into the country’s future. That relationship has been steadily crowded out as wholesale finance has come to dominate public borrowing. Scotland has the chance now to revive it in a form suited to the 21st century, using modern technology to make participation simple and the offer easy to understand. Of course, there are practical objections. Bonds of this sort cost more to administer, need marketing and may raise money more slowly than a single placement with institutions. Wholesale markets are technically more efficient. But these are arguments about administration, and not about what Scotland’s first financial act should say about the country’s capacity to look after itself. First acts establish expectations. If Scotland’s first invitation goes to international financial institutions, the message is that its future needs to be validated by the markets. If the first invitation goes to its own people, the message is that Scotland’s confidence, and its economic capacity, begins at home, funded by the country itself rather than borrowed from outside it. Scotland could issue a conventional wholesale bond. It would succeed. Institutional investors would buy it, rating agencies would approve of it, and Scotland would have shown it can behave like every other country. I want it to aspire to something more. It should prove that it can provide for itself, working with the people who live in Scotland. This first Scottish bond is the opportunity to demonstrate exactly that. The SNP are making a big mistake by not embracing this idea.