We have achieved lift-off, according to Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England in its most optimistic forecast for six years. Those struggling with debts, falling earnings and zero-hours contracts may not see much to celebrate. But Messrs Cameron and Osborne are confident the economy is riding to their electoral rescue. And on the face of it, there is a lot for Bullingdon man to be bullish about.

The Bank of England revised its economic growth forecasts yesterday to 1.6% this year and a remarkable 2.8% for 2014 - just in time for the 2015 general election. Given the economy has been in near-recession now for fully four years, this is obviously glass-half-full territory. As is reflected in the falling rate of unemployment and the increases in the numbers of people in work. Scotland's unemployment hasn't actually fallen, but it is anyway lower than in the South.

Indeed, Scotland continues to recover more rapidly than the rest of the country and almost every week brings encouraging economic news. The latest being the assessment of Sir Ian Wood that some three to four billion extra barrels of oil can be extracted from the North Sea. The issue is not how much value to attach to the oil wealth in the North Sea - £1.5 trillion according to Oil and Gas UK - but how quickly it is prudent to extract it.

We can now see how important it was that Grangemouth was not allowed to close. And perhaps it isn't so daft for the Clyde to start thinking about building oil supply vessels.

But that's some way off since the

next generation of Type 26 frigates has now been secured at Govan without the independence "wrecking clause" urged by Labour MP Ian Davidson. Had these disasters been allowed to happen, business confidence in Scotland would not be as strong as it is.

But before the UK and Scottish Governments start patting each other on the back, a word of caution. All economies bounce back from recessions, and there is evidence this one has been delayed by the government's austerity economics. The public spending cutbacks almost certainly extended and deepened the recession and opportunities were lost to ignite a recovery by socially worthwhile means, such as cutting taxes on the low-paid or promoting manufacturing investment. The present recovery has only happened because the Coalition has thrown its own austerity to the winds and started pumping public money into the South of England housing market.

Which brings us to the second cautionary note. It was a property bubble that got us into the economic crash and it is a property bubble the UK Government is hoping will pull us out of it. Even the most economically illiterate MP must surely recognise this is not entirely sensible when real wages are falling because of inflation. Average house prices in London are now a crazy £550,000 and rising by £50,000 a month.

Property madness hasn't afflicted Scotland to the same degree and house prices are actually falling here. But it is still our public money -

£100 billion - being used to lure another generation of families on to the south-east "housing ladder". Under Help to Buy, you can buy a £600,000 house with a 5% deposit of "only" £30,000 instead of a 20% deposit of £120,000.

Is this a sensible use of public money now food banks have become the only growth area on the high street and payday lenders are driving the destitute into the gutter? The Government could have used public money to help set up credit unions, restore Educational Maintenence Grants or generate loans to small firms. Instead it is laying the groundwork for the next financial crash and fuelling the great unmentionable in the independence debate: the relentless concentration of wealth in the south-east of England.

The value of housing in the borough of Westminster alone is £95bn, which is more than twice the value of all the houses in Edinburgh. There are seven times as many millionaires in the south-east as there are in Scotland and 50 times as many multi-millionaires. The UK Government's economic policy is not only dangerously unstable, it is accelerating Britain's geo-economic divide. Scotland generates more wealth per head of population than England, but little of this gets reinvested locally.

So, what's new? Hasn't Scotland always sent its skills and capital to England? Well, I think the extent of it is relatively new. Until recently, both Labour and the Tories paid lip-service to the idea the economy was common British property and it was one of the responsibilities of government to ensure economic growth was dispersed. This view is now almost wholly absent from Westminster's policy agenda, with Michael Heseltine the only politician of any standing who still argues for it. Regional policy is long dead, like manufacturing and nationalised industries.

The consequences? More is spent on transport infrastructure in London than in all the other regions combined. HS2, if ever built, is struggling to get past Manchester. More of the nation's wealth is being funnelled into banker bonuses and energy company profits. The south-east is another country and pulling away from the rest of us. Some say we should just wave goodbye. London is essentially a financial kleptocracy, built on inflated housing values and illegal banking practices. Let them suffer the consequences of their own financial folly. But it isn't as easy as that.

Scotland is unlikely to escape the toxic fallout from the south-east of England Bubble. The UK already has the one of the worst structural budget deficits in the western world, 5.7% according to the European Commission. This compares with 1.5% average for Europe and 0.8% in basket-case Italy. When Britain devalued the pound by 20% in 2008, exports were supposed to boom as they did in 1992 - but that hasn't happened. The Government has had to resort to financing the credit bubble to generate an economic recovery and secure its re-election.

The UK economy has turned into a vicious spiral of debt and deindustrialisation, sucking the wealth of Britain into a whirlpool located in the south-east. It would be understandable if Scotland decided to leap into the lifeboats and paddle away from this but the Scots are, for historical reasons, minded to stick with Britain. Unfortunately we really are all in this together.

And so, for the second time in my lifetime, Scotland will be called upon to bail out the south. The second oil boom that is coming, and the green energy boom that will follow it, will be pressed into service to finance the great debt restructuring. Scotland is the only country in the world to have paid for its own economic decline. It allowed oil revenues to flow south in the 1980s to finance Margaret Thatcher's City-centred deindustrialisation. Now it is about to do it again. Never have so few paid so much for so little.