For sanity’s sake, don’t let the SNP prop up a Marxist zealot – and risk destroying our nation

TOMORROW voters will be faced with a crossroads in political history – and a choice that could have a seismic impact on Britain’s future.

One path would allow the country to move on from its current state of limbo by honouring the result of the Brexit vote more than three years ago.

But the other would take us on a nightmarish journey ending in economic disaster – with an unrepentant Marxist given free rein to impose his lunatic manifesto. Jeremy Corbyn’s plans for nationalised public services alone would cost nearly £200billion, representing about 9 per cent of the output of the economy in a year.

Tax rises for individuals and businesses would amount to more than £80billion, part of a raft of hugely regressive policies that belong in a banana republic of precisely the kind that Mr Corbyn idolises.

Mr Corbyn’s endless prevarication over Brexit has approached the realm of self-parody, and would be comic if the potential consequences were not so profoundly grave.

To achieve his dystopian dream, the Labour leader would be willing to make any trade he deemed necessary, and would do so without compunction.

Waiting in the wings in the event of a hung Parliament is Nicola Sturgeon, whose own blind devotion to the separatist cause means she would not hesitate to help Mr Corbyn into Downing Street.

She would gladly volunteer her seal of approval for a Corbyn regime intent on dragging Britain back to the 1970s, despite her misgivings about his failure to root out rampant anti-Semitism in his own ranks.

For all her virtue-signalling advocacy of ‘progressive’ values, it is clear that Miss Sturgeon would sell them out in a heartbeat to a man described by a former head of MI6 as a ‘political relative of the gang of Communist henchmen who created East Germany’.

Jewish leaders in Scotland have warned Miss Sturgeon that she is preparing to throw their community ‘under a bus’, and that her proposed pact with the Labour leader is a ‘deal with the devil’.

It would be a double act that would lead to unprecedented chaos and division, with Miss Sturgeon pulling the strings.

But her offer would be highly conditional: she would expect, in return, permission for another vote on dismantling the UK, and Mr Corbyn would be happy to agree.

As the SNP also wants a rerun of the Brexit referendum (while hypocritically ruling out a ‘confirmatory’ Scexit vote), there would be no escape from the Groundhog Day of constitutional politics.

There is every possibility that next year would see two referendums, ensuring that the UK would be trapped in a seemingly interminable and increasingly poisonous debate.

Political uncertainty would have a further detrimental effect on the moribund and long-neglected Scottish economy.

And for what? To pave the way for another attempt at smashing apart our historic alliance of nations – despite a poll this week showing that 56 per cent of voters in Scotland want to stay in the UK.

Miss Sturgeon has preferred to posture over Brexit, and skirt around the granular detail of her party’s alarmingly threadbare prospectus for independence.

One of the Scottish Government’s own experts has warned of the probability of a Greece-style economic crisis if the government of an independent Scotland were to pursue its bizarre plan of sterlingisation – using the pound without Treasury consent.

Longer term, there is a proposal to ditch sterling in favour of a homegrown currency that would place pensions, savings and property in jeopardy. And yet Miss Sturgeon claims her Scexit plan would be more successful than Brexit because its proponents would manage the process more effectively – a claim for which there is not a scintilla of proof.

Indeed, this election campaign has exposed the track record of the SNP to intense scrutiny, revealing a long trail of broken pledges and disastrous initiatives.

In education, Miss Sturgeon vowed to put her ‘neck on the line’ to bring about desperately needed improvements, but the latest data shows Scottish pupils lagging behind their peers in former Soviet bloc nations on key skills.

On health, young cancer patients have died in a flagship super-hospital at the centre of concerns about contaminated tap water, while a £150million hospital for sick children stands idle after it was deemed unsafe to open to the public.

Elsewhere, the Nationalist policy agenda has been defined by the politics of the nanny state, from the Named Person state snooper scheme – which was finally dropped this year – to a ban on parental smacking. The SNP’s demands for further devolution of responsibilities from Westminster have intensified, despite a wealth of evidence that it has made a spectacular mess of the powers it already has.

Punitive taxation so manifestly unfair that the UK Government has had to intervene to compensate members of the Armed Forces in Scotland to prevent a morale-sapping pay apartheid means economic growth has proved negligible.

Some of the greatest challenges that lie ahead for our public services have been subordinated to the overarching objective of separatism at any cost.

Only a Conservative government can lift the threat of ‘neverendum’, and guarantee that no SNP request for another independence referendum is ever sanctioned.

And only the Tories can honour the result of the Brexit vote in 2016, at last effecting withdrawal from the EU – and bringing to an end the bitter stalemate that has done so much to reduce public trust in our political class.

The investment that has been held back by years of uncertainty will be unlocked, and the seeds will be sown for a transformative economic boost that will benefit every corner of the UK.

But this is a goal that will remain unfulfilled if the Tories are deprived of a working majority – leading to another Parliament permanently stuck in neutral.

With this unpalatable outcome in mind, many of our readers in seats where the SNP has wafer-thin majorities will wisely consider voting tactically – putting the future of the UK ahead of traditional party allegiances. There is no doubt that the Parliamentary log jam of recent years has stoked widespread disillusionment with politics, and the prospect of a second General Election in the space of just two-and-half years, in the runup to Christmas, is unappealing.

But the choice facing the electorate tomorrow could not be starker – backing the SNP is effectively a vote for a Labour government held together by Miss Sturgeon.

It would make it impossible for Scotland to move on from an era of deep-rooted division and economic stagnation.

For sanity’s sake, anyone who cares about our treasured Union should use their vote to send a message to the Nationalists about their destructive ideology that they will be unable to ignore.

The Union must not be allowed to become a bargaining chip to be traded away in a squalid backroom deal – to advance a bankrupt agenda that most Scots rejected five years ago.