Growth pains

Nicola Sturgeon has referred to the SNP’S Growth Commission report as a ‘new conversation’ on independence.

This is just the latest in a long line of attempted restarts of an independence debate which Nicola Sturgeon promised would be settled for a generation.

Since the report promises decades of austerity max with an independent Scotland needing to make billions of pounds worth of savings with crippling tax rises and cuts to public services, these added costs would be felt in every household, classroom, etc throughout Scotland.

It is therefore hardly surprising that it has been widely condemned by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, economic/ financial experts as well as by many within the Yes movement.

People have had enough of the SNP’S grandstanding on independence and want all politicians to focus on the here and now – for example, improving school standards, ensuring fair funding for our NHS and, crucially, building a Scottish economy that works for us all.

The latest Scottish Fiscal Commission report states that Scotland’s economy is lagging behind the rest of the UK, with slow productivity for over a decade, income tax receipts down, wages lower than a decade ago, borrowing at an all-time high and GDP growth to be below one per cent over the next six years.

In the 2014 referendum here in East Lothian, 62 per cent voted to reject the SNP’S call for independence. The unseating of the SNP MP in 2017 reinforced the East Lothian electorate’s opposition to the SNP’S policies, especially its aim of breaking up Britain.

The people of East Lothian (and the rest of Scotland) deserve a government at Holyrood that is focused on the day job. They do not want a government whose stewardship of the economy has been found wanting and whose overriding priority is to drag Scotland into the unknown with austerity on stilts without all the benefits of being part of the United Kingdom.

TIM JACKSON Scottish Conservatives & Unionists, Church Street, Haddington