Lukanyo Mnyanda, recently departed editor of Business Day, penned a fascinating story from Edinburgh published yesterday by his new employer, the Financial Times. It focuses on Scotland’s continued agitation for independence. Motivations expressed by Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon are sure to resonate with the Western Cape’s secessionists.
She leads the Scottish National Party (SNP) which holds 64 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament (it rules in coalition with the Green Party which has 7 seats). The SNP is campaigning for a second referendum on Scottish independence after a 55-45 loss in 2014. Scotland has been part of the UK for 315 years.
Sturgeon says the SNP’s strong showing in Scotland’s 2021 election was a mandate for a second independence referendum. This reflects a sharp swing in Scottish sentiment after Brexit forced it to leave the EU (55% of Scots voted to remain). The SNP is petitioning the UK Supreme Court to overturn Westminster’s blocking of another vote. The case starts today.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___The SNP leader is arguing that the UK was founded on “a voluntary partnership of nations”. Which, she says, means leaving the Union should also be voluntary. That argument is sure to be closely monitored by the Cape independence lobby. Not least because SA’s own Union in 1910, was “voluntarily” created between two colonies and two independent republics.
More for you to read today:
- September’s Stock-Market Woes May Bode Well for October. October’s reputation as a ‘bear killer’ may be more than a historical fluke.
- Policy Tensor: Notes from a Nuclear Crisis. A remarkable pivot on US Russia policy.
- World’s Emergency-Lending Capacity Is Getting Stretched as Crises Deepen. IMF, World Bank significantly ramped up lending in past two years; now Fed rate increases, inflation are hammering poor countries.
- Here Are the Few Stock-Fund Managers Who Managed to Post Gains Over the Past Year. The winning manager believes that we’re in the midst of a massive economic and market transformation.
Fiercely independent financial advisor Magnus Heystek has turned even more bearish on SA assets after taking a deep dive into researching implications of a threatened ‘Grey Listing’ of the country’s financial system in February 2023. Heystek says such action has never before been applied to a country of South Africa’s size and consequences are likely to be dire. He reckons it could be similar to the massive fallout experienced in December 2015 with Nenegate which, he says, started the slide into SA’s precarious position. In this sobering interview with Alec Hogg of BizNews, Heystek says the likely Grey Listing trumps all other factors for investors weighing up their options – and urges them to adopt an even higher offshore weighting for their savings.
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