Vince mince wince

And so to the LibDem conference and his economic highness Saint Vincent of Cable. Not content with financial soothsaying Mr Cable has turned a neuron or two to the question of Scottish independence. An independent Scotland would not have been able to rescue RBS we are told.

Obviously this conjecture hinges on whether an independent Scotland would have let RBS mushroom to such an extent. Mebbes aye, mebbes no. We simply don't know. Pointless speculation either way.

Of course, we could look at this a little differently...

More interesting is what a future independent Scotland will do with regard to the size of its banks. Well, thankfully we now have a very good lesson in the perils of letting banks get too big. Unless we wilfully ignore recent history it seems highly unlikely that a future independent Scotland will have this problem. So it is no argument whatsoever against independence.

We'll have all sorts of other problems mind you, just like any other country. But at least with independence we'll be completely free to deal with them. Or not. It will depend on us really. A fine prospect.