Gimcrack Imperial fantasies led to present predicament
The response of the Three Brexiteers - Messrs Abendroth, Gee and MacPherson - to my letter last week on the disastrous Tory Brexit epitomises the gimcrack Imperial fantasies that have led to our present predicament.
The Scottish Government’s huge vaccine rollout is not dependent on Westminster’s charity. It is being paid for by Scottish taxes and borrowing – over which Scots have no control – on our behalf by the Westminster government.
Virtually every country in the world is borrowing heavily to counter the Covid pandemic and, as an independent country in the EU, Scotland would have access to the EU’s solidarity stimulus plan, considerably greater than the UK’s. The notion that Scotland, with a mature European economy, is uniquely incapable of tackling our post-Covid challenges tells us more about those who spout these colonial myths than they realise.
Brexiteer insistence that walking out of the world’s largest single market will lead to ‘world beating’ trade deals is for the birds.
Mr Abendorth’s self-lauded Tory deal with the Pacific is small beer compared to the 6.1 per cent hit to Scotland’s economy that Brexit brings in its wake.
By contrast, the catastrophic 2007-08 banking crash was three per cent, which we are still paying for with stagnant wages and food banks.
Leaving the EU at the height of the Covid pandemic has been reckless and unforgivable, as is the price that Scotland is expected to pay for Boris Johnson’s folly.
Independence is now an urgent imperative to put the sovereign powers of change back into the hands of the Scottish people.
Ron Wilson, secretary, Kintyre SNP.