Chris

He’s referring to the per-capita allocation of defence spending that is nominally attributed to Scotland in the annual GERS figures (Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland). A favourite Nat trick is to vaguely assert Scotland would do things “differently” while not really being hot on the detail. In defence, what the Nats prefer to forget is that the UK’s defence spending is not excessive for a NATO member (2% of GDP is the target) and even if an independent Scotland preferred to adopt a neutral stance similar to Ireland (not sustainable in my view, given Scotland’s oil assets, its strategic position at the entrance to the North Sea, and Russia’s penchant for probing both the air defence zone and the limit of territorial waters) then Ireland’s defence spending is actually not vastly smaller as a proportion of its GDP.