Blue skies thinking

The Scotsman has apparently got hold of the SNP's 'masterplan' for the Scottish civil service (here):

"THE Scottish Nationalists are considering a radical overhaul of the civil service, which they claim would enable the party to run an independent Scotland without increasing the overall number of bureaucrats, The Scotsman can reveal.
Hundreds of junior staff could be laid off to make way for more senior posts in what the party termed a "repositioning and rebalancing exercise".
Just 50,000 civil servants would be needed to administer a fully autonomous Scotland, the party will say in a strategy document to be unveiled in the next week."

It is perhaps unfair to judge without seeing the actual document, not least because The Scotsman may have cherry-picked the 'sexy' bits for its article (in addition to the paper simply getting it wrong), but it does not sound much like a masterplan. For example:

"Stewart Hosie, the SNP's Treasury spokesman, confirmed it would be a "repositioning and rebalancing exercise" as the party aspires to be taken more seriously on economic affairs.
"If we have to lose a few lower-level clerks to get some senior finance experts, that's what we will have to do," Mr Hosie said."

What happens to the work that those lower-level clerks were doing? And from where do we get these senior finance experts, with policy experience in such areas as income tax, national insurance and corporate taxation (leaving aside for the moment the question of whether we would have a separate currency, with a consequent need for a central bank and our own interest rates)?

"A nationalist leadership would, it is claimed, keep the same civil service head-count, but "shake up" the composition of the jobs from lower, clerical roles to more highly skilled economists and diplomats as Scotland took control over Treasury matters and foreign affairs."

This seems to be the Tommy Cooper school of public administration. "Just like that", we will replace the clerks with highly skilled economists and diplomats. The rising stars of the Foreign Office will no doubt be straining at the leash to abandon the FCO Rolls-Royce for the Hillman Imp of the Scottish diplomatic service, with its prestigious embassies all over the world (where exactly?).

This is not to deride the effort on the part of the SNP. If independence is looming more closely on the horizon, it needs to start thinking about these matters in a sensible gradualist way. But the idea that sacking a few clerks will resolve matters is ludicrous. I look forward to the actual SNP document. Let us hope that it is the result of rather more thought than suggested by The Scotsman.