Blain’s Morning Porridge Nov 19^th, 2025 – Scotland, Kilts and Fitba’, has the world gone mad?

“We’re on the march wi’ Ally’s Army… we’ll really shake em up when we win the World Cup…”

The world has gone mad, but fear not, Scotland qualifying for the World Cup will trigger growth, prosperity and happiness (for a wee while – 3 games I expect). The imminent launch of Scottish KILTS bonds will open a Pandora’s box of difficult questions.

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Forget the impending bubble pop in AI. Fear not the looming credit bust that is Private Credit. Be unconcerned about Japanese bond yields starting to spike. Sleep sound as bitcoin proves as hollow, pointless and scammy as I always said it was. Ignore the possibility a global inflationary impulse is about to sink bond markets triggering global market mayhem.

The clearest signs yet of absolute irrational market exuberance is about to hit are to be found in two improbable things before breakfast:

• Scotland has qualified for the World Cup next year – 47 years after the greatest World Cup goal in the history of the Galaxy, Archie Gemmill vs Holland in the Argentina World Cup, and 27 years after Scotland had the temerity to score vs Brazil in the 1998 cup (I was there), finally there is a chance Football will be coming home to where it belongs… Hampden.
• Even more improbably…. my team, Heart of Midlothian, (Jambos) the perennial10th best team in a two-team league, is leading the Scottish Premier League, and hasn’t lost a game this season! They are 7 points clear of the mighty Celtic.

And to cap it all, Scotland nearly beat the magnificent All Blacks last weekend at Rugby. (We won’t mention how they snatched a humiliating defeat from certain victory against the Pumas on Saturday.)

What has this got to do with markets you are thinking?

Quite a lot. Sporting success – no matter how improbable – is soft-power and has multiplier effects on confidence. The thought of following Scotland round the USA, Canada and Mexico at next year’s World Cup (and utterly convinced Scotland will win) will see a tidal wave of productivity gains as Jimmy and Eck save their pennies to blow in some Miami dive bar. (Fair enough, the nation will be closed from June through July as everyone throws sickies.)

Donald Trump can build the walls however tall, but gallus wee Scotsmen will all be there for the matches. (And dinnae forget, Donny is 50% Scots himself, can he no pass a new law that beating Scotland will be illegal and any nation doing so will be punished with 1000% tariffs?)

The timing could not be better. Something critical for Scotland is happening around the same time that we are inevitably winning the World Cup on July 19^th, 2026, in the People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of NY, (actually in a stadium across the river in somewhere called Noo Joysay), under the benevolent eyes or Gotham Mayor, Zoran Mandami. (Hah, him and Trump watching together will be a giggle).

Around the same time, Scotland will be launching its “debut” international bond issue – hailed in the financial media as Kilts. Scotland has a received a rating the same as the UK – Aa3/AA.

Now personally I am gutted about this. I have spent my long and largely unthanked career in financial markets in pursuit of one plumb job: Head of the Scottish Debt Management Office. I think I would be brilliant as being the lad to go sell Scotland to global investors.

I can see it now… a debt roadshow sponsored by my mates from Grant’s Whisky. A pantechnicon fully of gear and loads and loads of tartan short-bread tins and scarves,  showcasing why investing in the most beautiful nation on earth, a race that practically invented everything the modern world is – from telephones to penicillin, and home of economics (Adam Smith, Mark Blyth and me), is bound to make sense.

Sadly… it would appear I didn’t even get asked to interview for the role.

I suspect I may have said too many unpleasant things about small countries closely tied to big countries not shooting themselves in the foot about independence. My vision for Scotland’s glorious future is to keep doing what do best – Running England to our advantage, rather than pretending we could do better on our own. (I will admit… there are times when I look at Westminster and think… wtf, we might as well hae independence! It cannae be ony worse..)

And I have a unique qualification to be Scotland’s Debt Office Chief. (Aye, I would have insisted on being called Great Chieftain o’ the Public Purse, giving me the right to wear an Eagle’s feather in ma bunnet!)

My qualification for the job would be that I have actually tried to sell Scottish debt to the market before.

Way back in the 20-teens some folk may remember the Greensill Hydro Deal. The slippery Ozzies arranged a well-dodgy financing for Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance to purchase the Lochaber Aluminium Smelter and Hydro Plant, and gave a £586mm power-purchase guarantee to the deal. The legislation existed allowing Scotland to issue debt or guarantees, but it had never been used. Greensill got the deal done in private capital markets with two large investors based on London buying the debt.

Shortly after it closed, one them realised they’d been sold a pup. They asked me to take a look and to see if I could sell it. It was soon apparent the structure was less than pristine. Rule 1 in credit is to be very suspicious of any overly complex corporate structure, and it was clear the Gupta GFC Alliance was a complete Swiss Cheese of places to hide the financial truth. We concluded there was “likely” a lot of dodgy accounting and double counting of stocks. The value of the deal was therefore entirely in the guarantee of the Scottish government.

How the deal got done remains a big question. We know former premier David Cameron was lobbying on behalf of Greensill after he got chopped after Brexit, and I am told the local Lochaber MP features heavily in Air Greensill passenger logs.. but these questions remain unasked in the fraud investigation that might or might not be underway.

I went round the private credit market trying to find a buyer for a deal we stripped down to essentially Scotland debt (the guarantee). There were takers, but at a massive discount. And the reason for that was independence risk – that an independent Scotland and the uncertainty around that would make the deal very risky.

Today the Scottish National Party is bragging the ratings reflect Scotland’s financial strength and resilience. No. They don’t. They reflect Scotland’s current strength and resilience as part of the UK. Should Scotland vote for independence (which I reckon is directly correlated to just how pants Government in Westminster is) then you will be looking at a mass of “what’s”, including what currency, debt sharing of the existing Gilts stock, customs, and the horrendous inflation the rising cost of concrete as the English build a great big wall from Gretna to Berwick creates.

Anyway… I’m still open to the job… I can pop into the office around any Scotland Home Rugby matches, or when I’m lecturing at the Edinburgh Business School…

Back during the 1998 World Cup a gang of us hired a private plane to watch Scotland win a 1-1 draw versus Norway in Bordeaux. What a day that was – I remember very little about the game. I came back shirtless, but with a Viking Helmet! I’m thinking of calling Monty and the rest of the gang to put the band back together for a US tour next year…

Out of time, back to the day job, and back to proper finance tomorrow..

Bill Blain

CEO – Windshift Capital

Author – The Morning Porridge

Partner – Shard Capital

Special Advisor – Spitfire Strategic Capital