Nirvana? No way

Jack Watt highlights the great contradiction in the SNP’S attitudes to membership of the EU compared with its positive place in the UK (Letters, 11 October). Like many he wonders if the SNP will ever come clean with us over the likely early impact on the Scottish economy of breaking away from our most important marketplace and the one we are most closely integrated with.

Equally, there is a silence from the SNP over just how they would intend restructuring the public finances of an independent Scotland to meet EU joining criteria, or indeed how long that would likely take. The SNP Growth Commission report effectively sidestepped the issue. Even assuming the Growth Commission’s heroic growth projections were achieved, it is probable that it would be more than a decade before our finances were ready to meet EU tests. Even then, Spain and other EU countries concerned about their own existing or potential separatists movements will be loath to encourage those who might break up their countries, so would likely block our entry.

The reality is that if the SNP had got its way in 2014, we would quite possibly have been left out of the EU for an indefinite period. As the SNP continue to agitate for an independence referendum re-run, there would again be no guarantees as to when we might secure EU membership, if ever. Instead, the proposition from Nicola Sturgeon and her leadership team is that we leave ourselves stranded out of both the UK and the EU, all to satisfy the SNP obsession with portraying the UK as bad in everyway way compared with its vision of a nationalist nirvana.

KEITH HOWELL West Linton, Peeblesshire