Can Scotland truly live again?

From The Brussels Journal:

A quote from Hamish McRae in The Independent, 11 April 2007

Could Scotland “go it alone”? It is a tantalising prospect, provoked I think more than anything else by the example of Ireland, which has seemed to have prospered as an independent country in a way that it could not have done had it been part of the UK.

[…] The plain fact here is that Ireland has boomed because of inward investment and that has been the result mainly, not entirely, because of favourable corporate tax rates. […] The ability to use tax competition as a weapon is something that large countries find hard to do because the losses, initially at least, are likely to be larger than the gains. For small countries it is different. The amount of inward investment you need to attract to offset the loss of revenue from the existing corporate base is more attainable.

I hope this is true. As someone whose roots are in Scotland I pray that this comes to pass. Scotland is a great nation with a proud history whose soul has been stolen by generations of welfare state handouts. Even those who get up every morning and go to work are likely to be addicted to subsidies of one sort or another.

If the nation experiences prosperity from free market capitalism there could be enough of a spark of the old Celtic spirit to fan into a brilliant flame of liberty.

For so long I've been afraid that the spirit of Wallace and The Bruce and Robert MacGregor was dead.

I hope I've been wrong about that.