Oh, not again! SNP launches latest bid for independence

NICOLA Sturgeon launched yet another bid for Scottish independence last night – but admitted the country would still use the pound if it left the UK.

The First Minister unveiled a 354-page report that claimed living standards in Scotland could ‘equal the best small countries in the world’ within a generation of secession.

The SNP leader said the Sustainable Growth Commission’s report showed how the country could ‘replace the despair of Brexit with optimism about Scotland’s future’.

The report, commissioned to explore how to grow Scotland’s economy, said the country could keep the pound for a period after independence, but could move to a new currency when six economic tests are met.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said it would mean Scotland using ‘the currency of what would then be a foreign country without asking, without their own central bank and without any backstops’.

She told the BBC: ‘I’m not entirely sure that is enough for the people of Scotland to want to gamble their mortgage on, their pensions on, their wages on and their future on.’