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Alex Salmond has long said he only likes to deal with hypotheticals when they assume the positive.

"What if you fail to reach your target of winning 20 seats?" No answer.

"What if you succeed...?" He responds enthusiastically.

And after he set out his new economic strategy on Thursday, no-one could accuse him of lacking in positive hypotheticals.

I heard the speech, and heard further from the SNP leader as well as his advisers. And the strategy seems to boil down to this:

There's no talk of cuts, seeing that as part of the Lab/Con/LibDem debate. The SNP's opponents are accused of having an iceberg of unidentified cuts lurking and threatening the good ship British Economic Recovery after the election.

Instead, there's a three-prong Nationalist approach, based not on a static model of taking the deficit as it is, but on a dynamic economic model of what there could be.

Having had the Scottish government's chief economic adviser (Andrew Goudie, a non-party civil servant) tell them there is a gap of between £25 and £35bn in spending over the next 12 to 15 years, they have sought to find ways to fill that gap, rather than cut spending in order to meet it.

For at least a year, the SNP would keep the extra £350m stimulus it had last year, but which it has been denied by the Treasury this year. Only once growth is secure for a full year, they reckon that could be withdrawn, and they don't expect that would be before next spring.

No new missiles

Once the risk of recession has been seen off, prong number one: cut big projects, prominent in statements over the past couple of weeks; no replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent, no nuclear waste dump, no ID cards etc.

I've already questioned whether these offer much in the way of savings over the next five years. The big Trident replacement savings kick in after that, which might help explain why Alex Salmond has chosen a 15-year horizon.

If we take the SNP's figures, Scotland's share of those savings would reach about £5bn, meaning 20% of the gap Dr Goudie has identified.

To that, add a couple of one-off additions to the Scottish budget: this year, a £200m fossil fuel levy the SNP says is due to Scotland but is being withheld by Whitehall. And next year, reckon on Scotland's share of London's Olympic spending, which the Treasury has refused to recognise as being worthy of sharing around the UK through the Barnett Formula.

Growth spurt

Another 40% of that gap could be filled in by continuing an efficiency squeeze of 2% per year on public spending. That squeeze is now being applied for the third year. Until now, it's been used to free up resources for government priorities. Under this new plan, it would be used to reduce spending.

The third 40% would come from the third prong of this strategy: boosting growth, and thus boosting earnings and tax revenue.

How would this come about?

No increase in National Insurance contributions next year, as Labour plans.

Next, help for business with a fuel duty regulator, pulling back on petrol and diesel tax increases when oil's market price rises.

Eventually, the SNP would like to cut corporation tax. But it's not in a hurry to do so, and it's no longer citing the success Ireland made of it until recently.

Taxation powers

That's if it were to win the powers to vary taxation. And that's where more assumptions pile in to this economic strategy.

First, it assumes Scotland would be given around 90% of the offshore oil revenue that comes from waters around Scotland and now goes direct to the Treasury.

Next, Alex Salmond has seized on the work of two eminent professors - Andrew Hughes-Hallett in economics, Drew Scott in European law - who reckon that Scotland could see a boost to its spending over five years if it were to have power over taxation.

If you look at the , they used foreign examples to argue that fiscal autonomy could, in itself, boost growth for five years.

There's quite a wide variation in the potential growth boost, and they're not guaranteed. Some countries shift to devolved taxation, and don't find that happening at all.

With a subsequent move to independence, it's claimed that Scotland could boost its growth rate by a perpetual 1% over the rate it could assume if it remains in the UK. The SNP plan assumes they would have fiscal autonomy for five years, and then have independence thereafter.

With that dynamic, Scotland would get to 2025, and everything would be peachy. To quote Alexander Meerkat: "Seemples".

Olympics share

But let's recap on how many hypotheticals we've just gone through:

Scotland would get the proceeds of the fossil fuel levy this year.

Next year, Scotland would be granted a share of London Olympics spending, based on the Barnett Formula and so far denied.

Scotland would have to secure devolution of full fiscal powers over the next couple of years.

The SNP argues this could be achieved with enough leverage over a minority government at Westminster. That outcome is hard to predict. What if there's a coalition which could ignore the SNP?

Scotland would get control over around 90% of offshore oil tax revenue, even while it remains within the UK and, of course, after it becomes independent.

There would be no significant costs in the transition to fiscal autonomy, and again to independence.

Independence premium

The savings from cancelling Trident and other projects would add up, as the SNP calculates, bringing a £5bn saving to Scotland.

The gap identified by Andrew Goudie would be at the lower end of his projections, whereas a growth rate falling below Treasury estimates (which many independent commentators believe to be over-optimistic) would mean a much bigger spending gap over the next 15 years.

The efficiency gains of 2% per year would have to be delivered throughout the 15-year period. While the SNP says it has been independently audited and its savings programme is working, the claims of efficiency savings in Whitehall are strongly doubted by independent analysts.

Fiscal autonomy would deliver the five-year boost suggested by Professors Hughes-Hallett and Scott.

Independence would provide a premium on the growth rate of 1%.

Meanwhile, this approach to spending would have to win the support of the bond markets. An independent Scotland would have to establish its credibility with credit ratings agencies Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor, while spending its way out of trouble. Indeed, there has to be a risk that a minority Westminster government having to give in to the demands being placed on it by nationalist MPs would suffer a blow to its credit rating in the next few months, knocking everyone's recovery plans off course.

This also seems to assume there would be no further recession during the next 15 years. If that were achieved, it would be unlike any period in modern history. Alex Salmond would have succeeded where Gordon Brown failed, in bringing an end to boom and bust.

To have all that going the SNP's way would require quite a lot of luck. Indeed, Scotland would have to make much of its luck, when it could be tempted into alternative policy decisions, about tax for instance.

So far, the SNP's new economic strategy looks a model of sunny optimism - a triumph of hope of fear and "a dismal decade" from its rivals. It doesn't seem to have taken much account of the potential downsides.