Pound posturing

IN THIS newspaper – as across the rest of the mainstream media – it has become routine for it to be stated unequivocally that a sterling currency union between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK is now a complete impossibility and simply will not – and could never – happen.

Many of your otherwise permanently cynical commentators, correspondents and readers, normally so suspicious of the veracity of politicians’ policy pronouncements, have suddenly and inexplicably chosen this moment to suspend their disbelief.

Instead, they have chosen wholeheartedly and unconditionally to trust the proclamation of Messers Osborne, Alexander and Balls that an independent Scotland would be somehow barred from continuing to use its own currency.

Such individuals should perhaps cast their minds back to the 2010 UK general election, when Osborne’s Tories promised that there would be no spending cuts to frontline public services and no privatisation or top-down re-organisation of the English NHS – and when Alexander’s Lib Dems promised to oppose austerity and abolish university tuition fees.

As for Balls, he was part of the Labour clique around Gordon Brown which declared to have abolished boom and bust. And we all know what happened next.

All of the main Westminster parties are more than capable of breaking their promise to oppose a post-Yes currency union once all the votes have been cast – and economic common sense and monetary reality is staring them in the face. The choice of platitude they use to justify their eventual U-turn – whether “circumstances have changed” or “we have listened to the people” – is purely incidental.

Their current posturing is nothing more than a short-term campaign tactic to generate maximum uncertainty and confusion. In other words, it is Westminster politics at its very worst.

DAVID KELLY Highfields Dunblane