Let’s drop this divisive ideology

Sir, – Les McKay (Letters, June 27) challenges me to explain why the Conservative government wants Scotland to remain in the union. It’s simple really. No state anywhere in the world would wish to give up a quarter or more of its land mass and its most strategic military bases. That is why wars have been fought.

That is why Ukraine is striving to beat back Russia. For over 300 years Scotland and England have been joined without borders in one state allowing the free movement of people, ideas, goods, and shared values.

Scots, English, Irish and Welsh worked together to enact the industrial revolution which was the most significant triumph in the history of mankind. And it was a British triumph.

Nicola Sturgeon has taken a wrecking ball to the union by setting Scot against Scot and the Scots against the English. When they talk of “toxic” Westminster they talk of “toxic England”.

They won’t succeed. Scots are getting scunnered by their “here’s tae us wha’s like us” comparison and all the girning about how Scotland is so badly done by when the reality is that standards of living have increased exponentially under the union.

We should be strengthening the bonds between Scotland and England not undermining them.

The UK is the fifth largest economy in the world, second in the Audit of Geopolitical Capability, with unmatched soft power, a military in the premier league, superb intelligence services, incredible research and development, a people blessed with outstanding skill, inventiveness, creativity and resolve, English as the international language and close connections across the globe. Why would Scotland wish to leave it?

I mentioned war, and we should also remember the sacrifice the British people made in the cause of freedom from 1939 to 1945. RAF Fighter Command inflicted the first decisive defeat on Hitler’s hitherto all-conquering military machine in the Battle of Britain– when Britain stood alone against this cruel and ruthless enemy. Bomber Command, which ripped the guts out of Nazi Germany, lost 55,000 men killed doing so.

During the Second World War 185,000 men – Scots, English, Welsh and Irish – served with the merchant navy, and 30,248 were killed, facing death from torpedoes, mines, aircraft, surface raiders, and the icy waters of the Atlantic and the Barents Sea. During the Battle of the Atlantic 3,500 of our supply ships were lost.

Meanwhile, Scottish nationalists of their time were banged up in Barlinnie for sedition, as they wanted Germany to win, as Gavin Bowd describes in his book Fascist Scotland.

Let’s now drop this divisive ideology and move forward together. One for one, and one for all.

William Loneskie. Justice Park,

Oxton.

UNION: A reader questions why Scotland would want to leave the UK.