Interesting times

I WAS taught that if, in a chess game, you found yourself damned by whichever move you were about to make, you had been caught in “a fork”.

The fork, and trap, that the SNP appears to have set for itself is the probability now that if it wins the independence referendum in 2014, it is likely to be voted from power a year later (and maybe for many years) as the voting population at large – which opinion polls tell us has little appetite for full independence – takes its revenge.

On the other hand, if the vote for independence is lost, the SNP will almost certainly win the next Holyrood election and many after, partly for the canny way it has governed so far … and maybe not a little sympathy. Ah, what it is to live through interesting times!

David Fiddimore

Calton Road, Edinburgh

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