Why honesty from Nicola Sturgeon on exports for independent Scotland is 'long overdue' - Pamela Nash

There is a consensus within Scottish politics that growing our nation’s exports should be prioritised.

Few could argue with Nicola Sturgeon’s argument that boosting exports would be ‘good for productivity, good for the balance of trade and good for our quality of life’.

So why is the First Minister so obsessed with taking Scotland out of the most important trading market we belong to – the UK?

Independence would be an act of economic vandalism that would take an axe to our exports industry, devastating jobs and livelihoods.

Nicola Sturgeon. Picture: Neil Hanna/WPA Pool/Getty Images

For someone who claims to care so much about Scotland’s potential, it’s baffling that she can’t see the reality of her constitutional obsession, which would put barriers in the way of the extraordinary opportunities we enjoy.

We are in the strange situation of having a nationalist party in Scotland that wants to diminish our nation’s potential.

Sturgeon is fond of describing the EU single market as ‘eight times bigger than the UK market’, which is a reference to the bloc’s population of 500 million.

What the SNP leader deliberately omits is the reality of Scotland’s export market, which was outlined on Thursday in the Scottish Government’s own official figures.

In 2019, trade with the rest of the UK of £52 billion amounted to a massive 60 per cent of all Scotland’s exports.

In contrast, the entire EU accounted for only 19 per cent (£16.4bn), while non-EU exports made up 21 per cent (£18.7bn).

That means trade with the rest of the UK is over three times more important for Scotland’s economy than the EU, demonstrating why leaving the UK would be devastating for jobs and livelihoods – and that’s even if a separate Scotland could rejoin the EU, which is far from guaranteed.