There’s a new hot buzz-phrase in the Yoonstream: “GERS deniers”.

It’s actually been around for quite a few months – coincidentally since this site started exposing the true nature of the figures – but has become a constant mantra recently, in particular since the intervention of an actual proper expert who doesn’t sell cat litter for a living, Professor Richard Murphy.

Ever since he set tongues and tails wagging by writing a series of hard-hitting articles for his widely-renowned Tax Research UK blog last week, rubbishing the quality of the data, Unionists have been in an increasingly shrill flap about it.

And it’s not hard to see why.

The phenomenon has culminated in a column in today’s Daily Record from social media’s favourite loss-making Whiskas-shifter, who barks out a string of personal insults as he angrily hounds Professor Murphy in order to cover up the fact that the brittle amateur blogger and would-be economist who’s pinned his entire credibility on GERS can’t get out of the increasingly-accepted fact that it’s meaningless bunk.

It’s worth taking a few moments to examine the case. Referring to SNP MSP Joan McAlpine, who’d cited Prof. Murphy in respect of GERS, the rant begins:

This isn’t actually true, however. GERS is indeed compiled and published by Scottish Government statisticians, but they do so on a very tight leash – just as McAlpine had stated, the basis of the figures used in GERS is data supplied by the UK Treasury, something which GERS makes very clear in its own preface.

Our pedigree chump continues:

Having concluded that what dastardly Nats would want him to do would be spend time attacking Professor Murphy, he decides to give them a treat:

But his evidence from two “exceptionally well qualified economics professors” isn’t quite the scoop that he’d have readers believe.

One of them absolutely does NOT proclaim the GERS figures to be “trustworthy”. All he actually says – despite being someone with a known propensity towards extremely doom-laden predictions for an independent Scotland’s economy – is that the figures are guesswork but there aren’t any better ones available:

And readers might feel a little bit squirrelly about the second expert too.

Firstly, the UK Statistics Authority is a UK government entity, notionally “independent” in the same way that the Office for Budget Responsibility is but ultimately caged in by Westminster. And secondly, the owlish Dr. Armstrong (we can find no reference to him anywhere as a Professor) is a former head of analysis for… HM Treasury.

Not to mention a House Of Lords special adviser on Scottish independence.

Unlike Professor Murphy, who as far as anyone can tell has no dog in the Scottish constitutional fight, it seems fair to assume that Dr Armstrong, while undoubtedly a learned and competent professional, might not be entirely neutral on the subject.

Especially as he also attempted to run as a candidate for Scottish Labour in 2015.

Despite having haughtily announced “End of discussion”, our unhappy Chappie retailer in fact rambles on for another 350 words after that, parroting out the traditional tired old boilerplate about an independent Scotland’s “£15bn deficit” and how it would mean vast tax increases or public spending cuts, even though we know from a whole raft of genuinely independent experts that that’s nonsense because GERS is (a) unlikely to be anywhere close to accurate, and (b) refers in any event to a devolved rather than an independent Scotland. That fact isn’t even a bone of contention:

Yet startlingly, and somewhat ironically in the circumstances, the article entirely fails to address the gigantic elephant in the room.

Continuing to doggedly measure a future independent Scotland’s finances against a “status quo” UK which effectively ceased to exist on 24 June 2016, to be replaced by a far more uncertain and – by pretty universal expert consensus – bleaker future is an extraordinary feat of dishonesty. Or to use a kinder and more pertinent word, denial.

And if you insist, even after being collared, on making arguments that are dependent on turning a blind eye to one half of the equation, you’re not going to win a lot.