It was exciting end to end stuff, with sharp shooters on both sides. Am I talking about this week’s massive economic clashes in the independence debate?
Absolutely not. I’m talking about Scotland vs Nigeria. As well as marking a first start for Dundee United’s Andy Robertson (cue cheers), the friendly was entertaining, with lots of skill and controversy not least because it was surrounded by a major police investigation into alleged match fixing.
If anyone had the inside track on the political manoeuvring, I hope they laid a few quid on a nil-nil draw.
To stretch the footballing analogy even further, it was like each time either the UK or Scottish governments were presented with open goals, they shanked the ball of the cross bar and let it roll back to their own six yard box into the path of their opponents. Who promptly did the same thing.
It all started with the much touted Treasury paper. Chief Secretary Danny Alexander called it “the most comprehensive analysis of the fiscal position of Scotland”.
Then it went poof like a puff of smoke as economics professor Patrick Dunleavy, whose research was used to suggest the set-up costs facing an independent Scotland could run to £2.7billion, called the figure misleading and demanded an apology. He was backed up in anger by Professor Robert Young of the University of Western Ontario, whose work was also cited.
Surely the Scottish Government would capitalise? Well, there was plenty of crowing. Rightly so, the Treasury’s presentation and spin machine was a shambles.
Throats sore from shouting “lies” at their opponents, now was time for the SNP workings. Or not. The usually thorough and impressive Finance Secretary, John Swinney, gave a car crash radio interview where he couldn’t provide accurate set-up costs despite being asked 13 times.
First Minister Alex Salmond then called £250 million a “reasonable estimate” after spotting Professor Dunleavy had said such a figure was probably about right.
Finally came the admission by the FM’s official spokesman that civil servants haven’t done and won’t do any work to find an accurate number because it’s “impossible” without knowing what the division of assets would be.
Rubbish. Utter rubbish. Civil servants regularly put forward estimates of all kinds of scenarios and there’s no reason they couldn’t do the same here, with different reasonable predictions for how things would be split.
It was all enough to make you want to hit your head off a brick wall for long enough that one of these back of these fag packet arguments might have a chance of getting over the line.
So thank you, Charlie Mulgrew. At least someone Scottish managed to show some skill and hit the back of the net when it mattered this week.