Enough SNP bleating about independence!

WHAT an unmitigated disaster it would have been for the Scottish people if, two years ago, they had swallowed the nationalist bromides of that arch con artist Alex Salmond and voted to break up the historic union of the United Kingdom.

On its ‘independence day’, scheduled for early this year, the wilfully idealistic SNP vision of a country buoyed by Norwaystyle oil wealth would have been exposed as the hollow promise it always was.

Instead, as figures revealed this week, Scotland would overnight have become an economic basket case, running a budget deficit eclipsing even borderline bankrupt Greece. How might it have hoped to survive unyoked from the Union and deprived of funds from England?

The plunging oil price has slashed North Sea tax revenues, once ludicrously predicted to total up to £8billion a year, according to SNP fantasy projections. They now stand at a paltry £60million. The new Scottish PM would have faced the choice of either brutal austerity or swingeing tax rises to fill a mindboggling £1,600 per person gap between income and spending. In short, the economic case for independence has been exposed as utterly risible.

And shouldn’t this devastating home truth also put paid to the fanciful idea that an independent Scotland would have found easy passage into the EU. Why on Earth would it have welcomed another economy so deep in the red?

Despite the overwhelming evidence, Miss Sturgeon – that deluded high priestess of independence – continues to cling to the promise of a second referendum, citing as her twisted justification Britain’s historic vote to leave the EU.

Put to one side the not insignificant four in ten Scots who did vote Leave. The Scottish referendum was about union with the UK, Brexit or no Brexit.

Meanwhile, English taxpayers continue to pay for Scots to enjoy free prescriptions and university tuition fees.

And, as a result of David Cameron’s lastditch bid to win votes, Scotland has gained unprecedented powers to run its own affairs, while the noisy rump of SNP MPs in Westminster continues to wield huge influence over English-only matters.

Despite these injustices, the Mail remains wholeheartedly of the view that ours is a mutually beneficial union, and one which will thrive outside the EU. We are so much better together. So can the SNP stop living in a fantasy world, concentrate on attempting to govern Scotland efficiently and just pipe down about independence!