Cornwall can gain if Scotland leaves UK

AS one Celtic nation in the UK looks to welcome the G7 to Porthreptor (Carbis Bay), the SNP in Edinburgh again looks to leave the UK. The timing of this push in a pandemic national emergency is disappointing.

From a Cornish point of view, Scotland has achieved all we aspire to – recognition, subsidies from the rest of the UK, allowing spend per head on health and social services way in excess of Cornwall, despite levels of deprivation being far higher here in Cornwall.

The SNP seems to be using the anti-UK rhetoric to divert attention from a Covid record nearly as bad as the English nationalists (Tories), a drug pandemic and a education system which is now eclipsed by London’s. The English nationalists who took over the Conservatives have taken the UK out of the EU. It is time for a UK progressive alliance to take us ever closer back to a reformed EU. What the EU and the UK needs now is less, not more, nationalism whether Tory or tartan.

If the SNP plays the EU card, it has to face hard choices of entering a Union as a region instead of a partner in the UK, a currency with no Scottish influence, and a fiscal regime which will no longer tolerate large deficits.

We in the rest of the UK will be sad to see Scotland leave the UK, but make no mistake Cornwall for one would be better off with Scottish access to Cornish fishing curtailed, and with NATO relocated to Aberfal (Falmouth).

It is more than economics, though. Finally, the EU is about removing borders, not reinstating ancient ones in a group of islands off the coast of France.

London voted Remain, as did Truro and Liverpool, and we will seek to remove the English nationalists from influence and hopefully Scotland will not fall for a nationalism and help build a progressive alliance to realign with a new Europe.

Timothy James Penzance