We know that at its heart the sell-off of RBS is an attempt to balance the books, but the issue that I pointed out earlier is that banks such as
RBS are still not lending enough to small businesses. That is vital. I referred to challenger banks. I come from a business background and speak to many people. That is what I hear from them about what they consider to be a critical issue.
For us, the G7 has more limited relevance. What we need to know is how we are performing as a medium-sized north-west European nation. Are we doing well, or are there opportunities for improvement? Thankfully, there is no shortage of comparable countries—our very own G7 equivalents, nations with characteristics similar to those of Scotland, but in most cases with far fewer natural resources. Whether we look north to Scandinavia, east to central Europe, south to the low countries or west to our Celtic cousins, comparisons abound among nations of similar size to Scotland. They are medium-sized in global terms, sitting in the middle third of global population rankings, not too big, not too small—the Goldilocks nations. Let us call them the M8, and I do not mean the boring motorway that runs between our two great cities. Those are countries with diverse histories, a range of memberships of international organisations and monetary systems, and varying levels of natural resources, physical geographies and cultures, but in their diversity all providing useful comparisons for Scotland. So how does the UK line up against them?
The M8 countries are among the wealthiest nations in the world. In terms of GDP per head their average has consistently outperformed that of both the G7 and the European 28. In terms of GDP per hour worked, which it is so vital to improve as a measure of productivity, their average also beats that of the G7 and Euro28. M8 countries are all richer than the UK by 25% on average, and the M8 countries are 9% richer per capita than the G7 as well—not a bad place to start, given our ambitions. Our aspiration as a nation is to be the best we can be, not to accept the poor performance and failed austerity agenda of the UK Government, but to look to what can be achieved when we set our sights a bit higher. Perhaps it is time we used the M8, rather than the G7, to frame our aspirations.
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