Indy‘disaster’

I was at the These Islands conference last weekend. Like Alan Hinnrich (Letters, 27 February) I wasn’t wholly impressed by Gordon Brown’s contribution, but for different reasons.

Mr Brown identified nationalism as the biggest threat to western civilisation and was particularly damning about Scottish nationalism, but conveniently ignored Labour’s contribution to its rise in Scotland.

While we can be thankful to him for his inspiring, referendum-winning, speech in 2014 (which in no way identified him as a British nationalist) his vow put several albatrosses round our necks, not least the undelivered, probably undeliverable, welfare agency which is costing us £651million just to set up and replicate the job the DWP has been doing well for years.

Overwhelming arguments and evidence were presented by some of the UK’S foremost economists, historians and commentators that independence would be an unmitigated disaster for us Scots, the UK and the wider world (by weakening the UK and therefore the core alliances that keep the world safe).

I was particularly stunned by the economists who were unanimous in the view that an independent Scotland would go bust unless drastic austerity was imposed. Angus Armstrong, one of the most respected macro economists in the world, went even further by saying that at some point the UK would have to bail an independent Scotland out to avoid having a “failed state on its doorstep”. Shades of Darien 1707 and Greece 2010.

What was most worrying was the inability to agree on how to get these messages simplified and communicated to the 30 per cent of voters who would influence the result of a future referendum – and the seemingly wilful ignoring of polls predicting an SNP majority in the Holyrood elections, an unanswerable demand for Indyref2, another close result and further years of division – even though it was Sir John Curtice delivering the news.

The only Scottish party leader on view was Willie Rennie. Neither he or his fellow leaders seem to have a plan for winning in 2021.

Scotland badly needs leaders to save us from our version of Donald Tusk’s “special kind of hell”. Help!!

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