New Scottish currency would be seriously exposed in event of economic attack

It seems as if we are going to be subjected to another discussion on independence and currency. For all those who are tired of this particular aspect of the debate, particularly on the pro-independence side, the currency we use does go to the very heart of what the constitutional debate is about.

Your choice of currency decides who controls your economy. The SNP often talk about “economic levers”, and this is the most important one. If Scotland wanted to become independent it would have to be able to manage its economy, and from that point of view having a new Scottish currency is entirely logical. That is a more honest position than we had in 2014.

The risk of having a new currency is that it cannot be supported properly and is vulnerable to economic attack by speculators and its value could crash. The value of our money and our assets could be slashed; that could happen within hours, and if it did happen, there would be nothing that could be done about it. It would be too late.

This has happened before and could easily happen again, because somewhere, someone is going to want to challenge this new currency to see how strong it is, and to do it before anyone else does.

So the risk associated with a new currency is the risk associated with independence. If you have a plausible answer to the currency issue then chances are you have a plausible plan for independence. The Yes campaign/snp lost in 2014 because they could not answer this question.

The issues and the risks have not changed. If anything, Brexit has made the risks of jumping in to the fire even worse. Now is not the time for independence.

VICTOR CLEMENTS Mamie’s Cottage, Aberfeldy SNP depute leader Keith Brown says a policy to have a new Scottish currency will “maximise support for an independent Scotland” (“Plans for a new Scots currency ‘desperate act’,” 2 March).

Yet the opposite is more likely when the full implications are understood.

Given the SNP want an independent Scotland to join the European Union, the consequence of voting for independence would be to contemplate three currencies in succession.

First sterling, unofficially during a transition period, then a new Scottish currency for sufficient time to meet EU joining criteria, and then finally, after joining the EU, adopting the euro.

Any who suggest Scotland could be in the EU without using the euro are indulging in fantasy. All recent new members have signed up to the euro, and if the last two years has shown anything it is that there is no flexibility in the way the EU treats its members.

KEITH HOWELL West Linton, Peeblesshire

So the Scottish Government is proposing a Scottish currency to “strengthen” their case for independence.

We are now surely entering Cloud Cuckoo Land. To have to change money and incur the inevitable costs just to go to Newcastle or Carlisle, let alone for most import/export transactions, seems to me to be an indefensible idea.

Are the SNP perhaps hoping that almost everyone will leave Scotland in order to make it easier for them to control and so govern?

Brigadoon reigns supreme, I fear. I thought for a minute that this was 1 April, not 1 March.

DAVID GERRARD Spylaw Park,

Edinburgh