HOW grateful we should be that, on June 23, the outside-London working and middle class voters of England and Wales delivered a crushing blow to the Remain campaign and to two party leaderships. Across the board in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Fein and SDLP all supported Remain, and promoted its group-think idiocies. Only the Democratic Unionists and Ukip actively supported Leave (“ Why there is such resentment at setting our course out of UK”, The Herald, August 20).
The worst of these groups was, and remains, the SNP, as it haplessly ploughs on in its tunnel-vision of “independence in Europe”, yet is totally incapable of articulating what the benefits would be in throwing off the alleged yoke of the “wicked English”, but embracing an EU one instead. Nationalists are becoming ever more ridiculous. Where would the tax revenues come from to plug the fiscal hole? With the success of fracking in the US, Opec has lost its power to force up the world oil price and public revenue. What currency to use? Sterling? No chance. A new separate Scottish currency would die in the foreign exchange markets under the weight of borrowing, of a considerable risk premium and of uncertainty. So “independence in Europe depends on adopting the dead-weight euro and its doubtful future, and sucking up to Germany.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the UK appears to be coming through Brexit largely unscathed. On the latest hard data (rather than on the panicky speculation of the Remainers), total unemployment and benefit claimants are down, total employment and consumption are up, the UK public budget was in surplus in July, inflation has risen by only one-tenth of a percentage point, the stock-market indices are above pre-Brexit levels, the trade deficit is falling thanks to the post-Brexit (and much-needed) sterling devaluation, and a recession (two successive quarters of falling output) is unlikely to happen.
Come on, First Minister, call your second independence referendum or pipe down about it. If such a referendum were to go ahead, then Westminster should legislate for each of the other countries of the UK to be separately asked if it wishes to end the UK by seceding from it. That is a right not just of Scotland alone.
Richard Mowbray,
14 Ancaster Drive, Glasgow.
ALASDAIR Galloway’s response (Letters, August 19) to my letter (August 17) about the risks an independent Scotland would face in taking on debt contains several inaccuracies.
He says that “because Standard Life considers itself a global business it must deal in a whole range of global currencies” and seems to think that this invalidates what I said about that business being unlikely to be able to invest in debt issued by an independent Scottish government.
Standard Life does not sell its products anywhere outside of the United Kingdom so his idea that it is global business is not exactly true and it certainly is not obliged to deal with a whole range of global currencies as he seems to think.
What it does have to do is to match its assets to its liabilities, and it is this fact that will preclude it from investing very much, if anything, in debt issued in a Scottish currency. Mr Galloway also wonders “how other small countries, which do not have a financial sector on the same scale as the UK get by”. He seems to be unaware that the populations a lot of small countries throughout the world are condemned to poverty because of unsustainable debt taken on by their governments.
All of these are not “known unknowns”, they are facts along with what I said about the cost of borrowing being a lot higher for an independent Scotland as compared with what it costs the United Kingdom to borrow money.
Peter Wylie,
26 New Street, Paisley.
YOUR correspondent Bill Brown is indeed correct to point out the history of intolerance in Scotland (Letters, August 22). We Scots do sometimes look at things with rose-tinted spectacles and could do with a more honest appraisal of ourselves and our attitudes.
However I have to disagree with him that xenophobia would necessarily thrive in an independent Scotland. Whilst there were plenty of incidents of nasty online behaviour in 2014, the rhetoric on the pro-independence side of the debate (in contrast to this year) wasn't one of blaming foreigners / outsiders and demanding controls on them. The aftermath of the 2014 referendum didn't see a spike in anti-English or anti-foreigner abuse or attacks, which has however happened this year after the EU referendum.
Scotland – as any nation – isn't immune to xenophobia, in the right circumstances. But those circumstances would demand a politics and leadership that play on such nativism. And thankfully, whether Unionist or Nationalist, the leaders of Scotland's main political parties have shown themselves firmly against poisonous attitudes to outsiders.
Michael Rossi,
66 Canalside Gardens, Southall, Middlesex.
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