We should go as soon as we can

AS a historian of Sir Tom Devine’s reputation, it is disappointing that he overlooks that history doesn’t always offer opportunities at the most propitious moments or under the best conditions (‘Devine intervention’, Politics Insight, September 18). For instance, would we have chosen to set up the NHS in 1948 when the country was exhausted and broke after the Second World War?

I do, though, take many of Sir Tom’s words of admonition, in particular that independence negotiations with the continuing UK would not “be in any way amicable”.

Is that not an argument for independence? Do we wish to remain in union with a country that, if the Scottish electorate have voted for independence, makes the negotiations to this end as difficult as possible?

However, when Sir Tom cautions that “Scotland would be in the cold for an extended period of time” between leaving the UK and rejoining the EU, he is not necessarily correct.

Kirsty Hughes, director of the Centre on Constitutional Change at Edinburgh University, noted in a tweet last February: “During transition from UK to independence and the EU, an independent Scotland could rapidly agree a temporary trade/association agreement with EU. It would need before or soon after joining to have own currency and commit to joining euro in future. It would get accession assistance/funds during transition,” going on to point out that “manufacturing exports to the remainder of the UK are almost same as to EU/EEA. Real challenge of border to rUK lie especially in services”.

On the question of the border, Dr Hughes has stated that characterising a border between rUK and an independent Scotland in the EU as a “great wall of Gretna”, as Home Office Minister Kevin Foster did, was “simply scaremongering” and “hypocrisy”.

Moreover, the longer Scotland remains part of the UK the more likely it is that there will be changes to UK law that make us non-compliant with EU law. Indeed, doing so was one of the main arguments for those who proposed Brexit.

It is therefore in our interests if we are to rejoin the EU to act quickly, even if, as Sir Tom argues, now is not optimal. However, as before, history does not always offer this advantage.

Alasdair Galloway, Dumbarton.