Why the Tories are right to put opposition to Scottish independence at the heart of their campaign

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : Public spending at 14 per cent higher than the UK average is only possible thanks to UK borrowing, which an independent Scotland would need to match.
50% : Unfortunately, for the unionist parties, the record of successive UK Governments in the past decade since the brief interregnum of relative calm between the independence and Brexit plebiscites has, to put it mildly, not been great.
48% : According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the notional Scottish fiscal deficit, the difference between spending and revenue, is an eye-watering and unsustainable 11.6 per cent compared to the UK's 5.1, which would put promised EU membership off the table while Greek-style austerity was imposed to even get close to the EU's three per cent requirement.
47% : The bedrock is higher public spending, and an uncosted promise of £1.7 billion, not including the capped food cost stunt, on top of a £5bn deficit with which the incoming administration must wrestle.
45% : The catastrophic impacts of the financial crash, Brexit upheaval, Ukraine War, Covid pandemic and the conflagration in the Middle East would have tested, if not defeated, the greatest masters of statecraft, but together they have allowed the SNP, Greens and Reform to claim they have the answers while clearly having nothing of the sort, but again what reaches voters is the soundbites they hear against the snippets of news which sink in and what they are experiencing in their daily lives.
43% : It's clearly frustrating for Scottish Labour and the Conservatives - Alex Cole-Hamilton's Lib Dems not so much as they manoeuvre into position as John Swinney's arm's-length coalition partner - that the SNP has had four goes and is about to get a fifth despite two decades in which no progress has been made in any of its responsibilities except to use the billions coming up from Westminster for the expansion of welfare and an unaffordable dependency culture.
31% : The paralysis which followed the vote to leave the EU wrecked Theresa May's tenure, Boris Johnson's implosion in the wake of Partygate, the disaster of the Liz Truss experiment, and now the sleaze-ridden and directionless Starmer leadership, have opened the door to extreme Reform and Green alternatives.

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