YOU report that Nicola Sturgeon is calling on all the electorate to support her in the forthcoming General Election to strengthen her hand with her demand for a separate deal under Brexit which would keep Scotland in the single market ("Sturgeon's Brexit mandate move", The Herald, May 15). Her principal justification for that is her repeated warning of 80,000 job losses, and presumably no gains, should Scotland leave the single market, a figure arrived at no doubt after robust research. To her credit, she has in the past said that she wishes the electorate to be able to make informed decisions. It follows that to avoid any accusations that she is simply scaremongering, she should publish immediately a breakdown of the particular areas of the Scottish economy which her research has indicated would suffer those losses and the respective extents of those losses.
Also she reaffirms that her priority remains for Scotland to have full membership of the EU which she believes to be in Scotland's best interests. This could be achieved only by breaking away from the UK, but she makes no similar research-based warning of consequential substantial job losses, or for that matter gains. This failure could indicate none was foreseen, or remarkably that such research was considered unnecessary or perhaps likely to be unhelpful to her cause. Should there ever be another referendum, it is no more than reasonable for the then government to undertake to hold and publish the results of such research so that the electorate can make an informed decision.
Alan Fitzpatrick,
10 Solomon's View, Dunlop.
NICOLA Sturgeon's attempt to deflect the debate from the failing public sector (especially education), the unsustainable fiscal deficit, our GDP falling behind rUK and the fact that most Scots do not want a second referendum by somehow recycling her Brexit demands is doomed to fail.
For example, Ms Sturgeon's plan to rejoin the EU as a full member (if independent) is now in tatters as she scrambles around for an interim position until perhaps Scotland could meet the criteria required to join. Her latest position is to declare that Scotland may have to initially join the small European trading block, EFTA, which includes Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland in a "phased approach" to EU membership.
Really – and what about our largest (by far) trading partner rUK?
With regard to her fanciful claim that somehow the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) would not apply to Scotland is also silly, otherwise why did Iceland's fishing minister say that that their country would "never join the EU" in order to "retain control over their fishing grounds"? They have since declared that Iceland "should not be regarded as a candidate country for EU membership".
Her comment on an euro currency is equally suspect as she should know that all new member states have to join the euro (when the criteria is met) and sign up to the ever-closer EU political union dominated by Germany - Sweden has been an EU member for nearly 25 years and as such has no future obligation to use the euro.
No matter how the SNP twists and turns, the electorate in Scotland are fed up with divisiveness and wish to have a government that gets on with the day job of running the country and not be represented by a movement which has the sole aim of breaking a successful 300-year-old Union regardless of the outcome.
Ian Lakin,
Pinelands, Murtle Den Road, Milltimber, Aberdeen.
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