WE are now at a particularly fraught period in Scottish politics, one where we could either make or break the independence cause. I joined the SNP in 1955, at the age of 15, because it was the only party which stood for Scottish independence. I left on December 3 1990, after 35 years, because of the party’s adoption of “Independence in Europe” and an increasingly slavish attachment to the concept of a United States of Europe.

My views on the EU have never changed, I am still a hard-line, uncompromising Scottish nationalist, dedicated to the return of sovereignty to the Scottish people, where it belongs. Membership of the EU would deny to the Scottish people that very simple prerequisite for independence.

That doesn’t make me a racist or xenophobic or sectarian, and I am not an uneducated idiot who voted Leave because I hadn’t a clue what I was voting for. I believe the same could be said of the vast majority of the 1 million-plus Scots who also voted Leave, more than 450,000 of whom were regular SNP supporters.

Unfortunately that is not the opinion of the majority of the readership of The National, who fill the columns of this paper daily with a stream of invective and bile, aimed at “the idiots” who voted for “Brexit”.

Time was when “nationalists” – now an unsavoury term in the SNP – took great pleasure in pointing out the inconsistencies, half-truths and outright lies regularly contained in Unionist propaganda. Now, unfortunately, the same can be said for much that emanates from the SNP and its supporters. The inconsistencies and contradictions in SNP policy stances are now an embarrassment to many nationalists who have spent their lives campaigning for independence.

The constant repetition of Scotland’s alleged need to remain part of the EU makes me wonder how the SNP/independence movement now intend to make the case for independence. We spent decades listening to Unionists promising economic collapse if Scotland left the UK, claims that were rightly dismissed as arrant nonsense. Better Together really plumbed the depths, as they sought to terrify Scots into voting No, but has the message from the SNP anent Scots’ membership of the EU been any better or any more honest?

Nationalists never saw any difficulty leaving the UK but are now horrified by the prospect of economic collapse, which they predict daily, if we leave the EU. Scotland’s trade with rUK is currently worth FOUR times its trade with the EU. Yes/Remain voters point to any reports that predict damage to Scotland’s economy by Brexit as if they are the Ten Commandments. It has been variously predicted that Brexit will cost the Scottish economy £12.7 billion to £16bn annually by 2030. During the independence campaign in 2014, the same civil servants who produced some of those reports claimed it would cost Scotland a minimum of £2.5bn to set up “new” government structures.

It is now generally accepted that the debacle over the currency was a major factor in Scots returning a No vote in the independence referendum, and the issue has continued to be the cause of concern within the independence movement ever since. The Growth Commission report recommending that an “independent” Scotland should continue to use sterling for the first decade has been widely, and rightly, criticised in the independence movement, not least by George Kerevan in this newspaper.

Critics of the report’s “sterlingisation” recommendation have all made the same point, indeed the most relevant point – a country which uses the currency of another country, has no control over monetary policy, interest rates and must rely on a “foreign” bank as its lender of last resort, cannot claim to be independent. That simple fact has enormous implications for the SNP’s claim that membership of the EU does not alter members’ independent status. I dispute that claim, but what of the 19 members of the Eurozone, none of which has its own currency? If Scotland cannot be independent unless it has its own currency, that also applies to Germany and France, the two examples most often thrown at me by Yes/Remain voters, who cannot conceive they are anything other than independent. The problems faced by the countries of southern Europe as a consequence of having no control over monetary policy are either simply ignored, or laid at their own door.

Those problems are not going to go away and unless the contradictions in SNP policy are faced, the biggest losers are going to be the Scottish people.

Jim Fairlie
Crieff