Take on the world now:

Forget the SNP’s Groundhog Day plans for the future... the keys to a better Scotland are in our hands already

IT was, said Alex Salmond, ‘the most comprehensive blueprint for an independent country ever published’. Nicola Sturgeon described it as ‘the most detailed prospectus ever produced by a country on the brink of independence’. I remember it all well.

When, during the referendum campaign, sceptics politely asked whether the SNP had actually thought through the details of separating the world’s most successful political union, we were patted on the head and told to consult the Scottish Government’s White Paper, the Bible of Independence.

Indeed, as one Nationalist scribe put, we ‘all must get behind it as Scotland’s independent starting point: currency, monarchy, Nato and all’.

Four years on, all has changed. On Friday, the SNP unveiled a new plan, authored by Andrew Wilson, the man who penned the sentence above. It is now time to ‘get behind’ something different altogether.

Rather than having a currency union – which four years ago was ‘in Scotland’s interests’ because ‘It’s Scotland’s pound and we are keeping it’ – we’re now informed we’ll be moving, eventually, to a new currency entirely. While last time we were told we’d be £2,000 richer, this time Mr Wilson’s SNP says the total has gone up to £4,100.

Economic growth will be supported because we’ll double overseas exports – just like that. In 2013, we were told we could be ‘free’ within 18 months and the figure of £20 million was cited for costs; now that’s gone up to five years and £450 million. Even though we’ll have to take on a bigger deficit than any other comparable small nation, we will ‘move away’ from relying on too much debt by… well, because we will.

Any tricky questions left? Well, the blueprint proposes the creation of three new commissions, six new strategies, four new reviews, one strategy review and one standing council to look at them. Job done.

Mr Wilson has, to be fair, been more credible about the costs of independence than the original White Paper he asked us all to support. But this is largely because that so-called ‘Bible’ had only one page of actual numbers setting out the finances of a future Scottish state and simply avoided the hard questions people were asking. It is not a high bar to leap.

In truth, we are not much further forward than where we were last week, last month or four years ago. Everyone, including the birds in the trees, knows independence will cost a vast sum of money. Everyone knows it is self-defeating to cut ourselves off from our biggest market and nearest neighbour by creating a new currency.

THE SNP is currently beside itself about the disruption and cost that will be incurred by the UK’s departure from the European Union. But we are asked to believe leaving our own Union, which is four times more important to us than the EU in terms of trade and market, is a mere flesh wound.

It is that sense of being here before which will, I suspect, stick in the mind long after we have stopped discussing the contents of this report.

I have been at the helm of the Scottish Conservatives for over six years, a period when the constitution and independence have dominated to the exclusion of all else.

On Friday, running between TV interviews while giving my response to the SNP’s latest plan, I was shouted at from a car window by someone yelling ‘Independeeeeeeeence’ as he sped past; then followed and filmed by another man wanting to know why I didn’t back it. I enjoy watching the film Groundhog Day: I am weary at the idea of actually having to live it. Again. And again.

But for those of us who do back the UK, resist we must – and that is what the Scottish Conservatives are determined to do. The publication of the SNP’s plan on Friday will be just the start of yet another summer campaign on independence by Nicola Sturgeon.

After that, come the autumn, she will make up her mind as to whether to revive her plan to hold a second referendum in the next couple of years.

Brexit is the pretext for the SNP’s latest attempt to keep the issue alive but if it wasn’t Brexit, it would be something else. Nicola Sturgeon wants her shot at history, just as Alex Salmond had his. For so long as she holds the reins of power at Holyrood, the SNP will keep pushing, pushing, pushing.

WE will do two things. Firstly, the Prime Minister and I will be utterly resolute in opposing that second referendum. The SNP promised to respect the last result. Scotland doesn’t want a rerun. Another referendum on top of the uncertainty of Brexit would be madness. We won’t bend on this.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I aim to show there is a way out of this cul-de-sac we have got ourselves stuck in.

This week, I’ll be giving a speech at the University of Glasgow on economic growth and how we share prosperity fairly in the modern world. As a Centre-Right politician, I want to show free markets and an open liberal society can work for us all. As someone seeking to run the Scottish Government, I want to set out how Scotland and the UK can become more prosperous and be a fairer country as we do so.

I intend to mention the word ‘independence’ precisely no times whatsoever because it really is time to move on. We can’t hang around for ever having increasingly pointless debates about the hypothetical benefits of a currency position we’re never going to adopt.

We can’t afford to waste another decade with relaunches of independence plans, four years after the last one. Not when Scotland has a bright future – now. Not when, as a nation with its own parliament, its own tax and welfare system and full powers over education, health and domestic policy, we can take on the world – now.

The SNP may want to rerun the battles of the past and wallow in an endless Groundhog Day. But, please, leave the rest of us out of it. We have better things to do.

We have better things to do than independence