Spain will not stop Scotland

Sir, - Spain’s potential attitude to the prospect of an independent Scotland seeking EU membership might not be all that is seems.

While Spain will not want to encourage its own separatist movements, it will realise that in all likelihood its view on Scotland’s membership will be academic for many years to come.

The starting point for a Scotland separated from the UK would be an imbalanced economy that is spending well beyond its means.

As a consequence, all of the EU members – not just Spain – would insist Scotland reduces the

It is true that it has been a good winter for pottering about in the garden, but that is a totally different ball game from working more than 200ft above the Firth of Forth, where a breeze at ground level can be magnified to a gale at that height

scale of its fiscal deficit from 9.5% of GDP to 3%, in line with the EU’s joining criteria.

This would need to be achieved through cost savings and tax increases, and would realistically take a number of years.

If Scotland is ever to be an independent member of the EU it will need to be a radically different country financially to the one it is today.

So Spain does not need to create its own obstacles to an independent Scotland’s EU membership.

The EU’s financiers will do that for them with a very demanding hurdle to jump before membership could be entertained.

Keith Howell. White Moss, West Linton.