Separation folly

THE nationalist response to the GERS figures is astonishing.

Scotland spent £99.2billion last year of which only £62.8billion was raised here – £36billion came from the UK Treasury. An independent Scotland would be bankrupt before it started. Yet the SNP now dismisses this as of no consequence.

The SNP and its acolytes claim that because the UK can run a deficit so could they. They miss the importance of fiscal trust.

The reason the UK can borrow is because the international markets trust that their interest will be repaid based on the reputation of the Bank of england, which stretches back 300 years. You cannot replicate that overnight.

The nationalists seem to have forgotten it was the UK Treasury and Bank of england that responded when RBS told Alistair Darling, then chancellor, that the Scottish bank ‘was about to run out of money’.

As Professor Ronald MacDonald has written: ‘There can be little doubt that the current GERS figures again highlight the sheer folly of the SNP’S independence plans and the huge costs and disruption that they will impose on the Scottish economy in any transition to an independent country.’

WILLIAM LONESKIE, Lauder, Berwickshire.