Day of reckoning

The latest poll should have the supposedly supremely confident First Minister bursting a gut to set a date for an almost immediate referendum. Why, then, do we all know it will not come?

It will not come for the simple reason that he does not dare define independence as your leader asks (17 October) and go for a straight yes/no decision. That is a vote he could never win.

There will be no Labour Party to fight on his terms and meekly hand over power. A straight yes/no is something that cannot be wrapped up in obscurantism in the style of the “Alex Salmond for First Minister” scandal and keep him in the glory to which he has become accustomed.

A multi-option choice is his only way out. Doing it the honest way he would need to tell us the cost in, yes, much as it scoffed at, customs posts at our borders if imposed by the English, and who could blame them, and in welfare, jobs, pensions, military, status in Europe and the world.

It would need to be more than some vague “Scotland’s oil” panacea to all the problems that would engulf and perhaps destroy a Scotland broken off from the rest of the UK.

The day of reckoning is fast approaching and I relish it.

Alexander McKay

New Cut Rigg

Edinburgh