Today is GERS day, the day when the Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland statement is published by the Scottish Government for reasons that no sane person can actually understand, because it imparts no useful information of any sort to any human being who is curious about the state of well-being in Scotland.

Let's get some basic facts right.

GERS tells us nothing about the state of the Scottish Government's finances. By law, they have to balance, and yet the GERS statement says that there is a deficit in Scotland, but by definition that cannot, then, be the responsibility of the Scottish Government.

Nor can any other authority in Scotland run a deficit.

So, by definition, if there is a deficit in government finances in Scotland, that is entirely the responsibility of Westminster.

What we know, as a result, is that the government in Westminster dumps costs on Scotland in the hope of blaming Scotland for its own failings. You should not believe a word GERS has to say in that case.

Then there is another point to note. As a result, GERS provides no indication of what the finances of an independent Scotland would look like. Even the Fraser of Allander Institute at Strathclyde University, which rarely seems to have any sympathy with the nationalist cause, admits this.

So, what is GERS all about? It was created in the 1990s by the Tories to try to show that Scotland was too wee, too poor and too stupid to be an independent country, and when all is said and done, that is exactly what its purpose is now. I know that the methodology has been refined in the meantime, and I know that the Office for National Statistics certifies that it is a credible economic statement, but a lot of what that organisation produces is absolute crap, and this one is too, if CRAp means a “completely rubbish approximation” to the truth.

And, as I have repeatedly pointed out, GERS is completely technically flawed because it only includes tax revenues paid in Scotland, whilst including expenditure made for Scotland, which by definition is a much bigger figure, because much of that spending originates in Westminster. It does, therefore, compare apples and oranges, and in statistical and accounting terms that is ethically unacceptable.

So, we should ignore GERS, but the news agenda suggests otherwise, so what is it actually saying this year?

The overall claim is that, of the £132 billion deficit incurred by the UK as a whole in the year to March 2026, £25.3 billion arose in Scotland. Now, near enough 8% of all people who live in the UK live in Scotland. That means that, if the deficit were shared evenly, Scotland should have incurred about £10.5 billion of it, but it is claimed that the proportion is much bigger than that.

What is the implication? It is, supposedly, that people in Scotland get a much bigger subsidy for their lifestyle than do people in the rest of the UK. And it is, as already noted, that Scotland is too poor to sustain itself. That is the whole point of this exercise.

But let's come down to the facts here. Scotland is poorer than the rest of the UK, as are Wales, Northern Ireland and parts of northern and rural England as well, because the City of London exists to suck the lifeblood out of all of them, as it used to suck the lifeblood out of the UK's colonies.

But let's come down to the facts here. Scotland is poorer than the rest of the UK. Wales, Northern Ireland and parts of northern and rural England are as well. That is because the City of London exists to suck the lifeblood out of all of them, as it used to suck the lifeblood out of the UK's colonies. That Scotland is poorer is not an accident. It is by design, and there is no sign that Westminster has any plan to change that.

What GERS shows is that the plan is working. The message is that there is only one way to break this, and that is through independence. Only by having a government that wants to make the people of Scotland wealthier, rather than the south-east of England wealthier, will Scotland flourish.

And the same is true with tax. Only if Scotland has a tax authority that insists that all the interest paid in the country, all the rent paid in the country, all the profits earned in the country and all the wages, capital gains and other charges due on economic activity in the country are actually paid in Scotland, at fair tax rates that genuinely reflect the distribution of wealth in the country, will Scotland collect what is really owing to it. But at present, it has not got such a tax system, and that is part of the problem GERS also highlights.

So what should we conclude from all of this? I suggest three things.

The first is that it really is time for the SNP to stop publishing this nonsense. It reflects no outcome for any known organisation, including the government in Scotland, so why does it feel obliged to produce it?

Secondly, we should call out this data as pro-unionist claptrap, which is what it is.

Third, as others are doing, we should imagine the economic possibilities of an independent Scotland, and how those possibilities can be delivered in practice. Look at the work of Common Weal. Look at the work of the Scottish Currency Group. Look at what William Thomson and others are doing on Scottish political economy. These narratives are being built.

The time has come to move on from nonsense and to talk about what could be the reality in Scotland, which is a country very much better than the one that England will ever permit it to be.