In a couple of days’ time Scottish politics will endure the annual Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) bun-fight, a predictable scrap between Unionists and Nationalists over Scotland’s fiscal balance.

Or perhaps I should say bi-annual, for the data is usually published each March (as it was earlier this year) when the Scottish Parliament is in session, generally making life uncomfortable for the First Minister while providing her opponents with an easy line of attack.

Publication, however, has been moved to late August, when of course Holyrood is still in recess. Conservative and Liberal Democrat MSPs have branded this “cowardly”, but if it was the Scottish Government’s intention to avoid scrutiny (it points to a consultation showing “widespread support” for the move) it might backfire, for the silly season has a tendency to fuel bad news stories rather than dampen them.

The timing is also potentially unhelpful, for within a matter of weeks the SNP is not only expected to unveil its summer (now autumn) “initiative” on independence, but also commission long-overdue work on the “economic case” for independence, chiefly currency and the increasing gap between what’s raised in Scotland and what’s spent.

How ministers respond to further bad news on Wednesday is predictable: the First Minister et al will skirt over the headline figures and repeat several mantras, chiefly that “every country has a deficit” (true, just few as large as Scotland’s) and the fact they lack control over the full range of “fiscal levers” (also true, although meaningless in the absence of detail as to how they’d use them).

The ongoing economic impact of Brexit is also likely to serve as a useful (and partially justified) debating point, but none of this will be sufficient to escape the central point: that an independent Scotland would start life with a huge fiscal black hole. Now that might close in the medium to long term, but it would nevertheless exist on day one and therefore require a response from the Scottish Government.

Back in March the GERS figures revealed a massive £15-billion budget “deficit” just days before what might have been “Independence Day” had Scotland voted “Yes” in September 2014. The response from the Scottish Government was less than impressive considering the collapsing oil price could hardly have come as a surprise. Faced at First Minister’s Question Time with a choice between accepting reality and overhauling party strategy or accusing opponents of “talking Scotland down”, Nicola Sturgeon didn’t hesitate in opting for the latter.

And in a deeply uncomfortable interview with the BBC’s Andrew Neil all she could offer by way of counter-attack was the line that Scotland’s economy remained “fundamentally strong” and that a hypothetically independent country would be dealing with such a deficit “in the same way” the UK had dealt with its in 2009/10 – i.e. through spending cuts. It was a testament to Ms Sturgeon’s popularity that this interview produced little reputational damage.

Indeed, years of effective (yet incredibly cynical) spin has produced a situation where the GERS statistics ought to have considerably more impact than they actually do. The SNP benefits from a general lack of interest in – if not suspicion of – “official” figures. Hey, economic reality made little difference in June’s EU referendum, so it’s difficult to see why it should in a specifically Scottish context. The usual suspects, meanwhile, promote a range of shallow tropes about GERS telling us “nothing” about the likely fiscal context of an independent Scotland, when of course they tell us rather a lot.

Nevertheless, in the weeks since Brexit I’ve encountered an awful lot of what can be termed “GERS deniers”, those who genuinely believe Scotland receives massive fiscal transfers from the European Union but little or nothing from the UK. At a private dinner a few weeks ago I heard one otherwise cerebral financier claim that Westminster had given Scotland “nothing”. It truly was a “what have the Romans ever done for us?” moment.

Now I realise I’m not in a strong position to offer the SNP strategic advice, but here goes. GERS, much like any other political problem, ought to be viewed as an opportunity rather than something to be spun out of. A good example of this is oil; rather than keep on insisting that this is an exceptional slump and that everything will be fine at some point in the future (step forward Alex Salmond), why not start to accept that it’s simply spent as a tax-generating resource?

Had the SNP not got itself into a largely self-inflicted bind over fracking this would be a lot easier, but beyond that my economically-literate Nationalist friends (yes, they do exist) highlight two “credible” ways of looking at what GERS tells us about the Scottish economy and indeed the UK’s public finances and deficit, which aren’t exactly rosy themselves.

First is what could be called the IFS (Institute for Fiscal Studies) perspective, which emphasises today’s balance-sheet position as the key indicator for the future. That worldview considers the role of government (be it devolved or otherwise) as limited, and therefore advocates cutting cloth according to circumstances, i.e. raising taxes and reducing public spending in order to plug fiscal gaps.

The other, and necessarily more optimistic, view is that governments can be a key driver of economic growth. In that context the depletion of North Sea oil means the Scottish Government ought to urgently recognise the need to broaden the economic base and therefore produce a coherent strategy for growth. After all, the UK economy is overly reliant on financial services (and therefore the stock market), which it could be argued is as “volatile” an economic basis as oil.

This, of course, is easier said than done, and Scottish politicians (be they SNP or Labour) have long banged on about stimulating economic “growth” without ever adequately explaining how. But if the SNP did its homework, gathered around them the finest minds and played the long game, it could conceivably fashion a case that dovetailed nicely with its framing of the post-Brexit world, i.e. a Scotland – most likely independent – still in the EU and equipped with the full range of legislative and fiscal powers.

Talk of a financial services opportunity for Edinburgh following Brexit would also sit well with this approach, as would a more corporatist attempt to stimulate manufacturing (think Clyde at Fergusons) and further expand Scotland’s successful food and drink sector. The question that could be posed is whether that’s more likely within a London-centric UK outside the EU, or a more autonomous/independent Scotland within it, particularly one intent on tackling demographic trends by significantly increasing migration.

But even if all of the above were possible, it would still need to be couched in fundamentally more honest economic terms. Independence is not, and has never been, an economic panacea, but a more mature response to this week’s GERS figures could be an opportunity to turn it into a much more credible means to an end.