Colin Smith @NoteTaker_X

Claiming “the banks would adapt” to a new currency is an economically illiterate lie; if wages and pensions are paid in a newly devalued Scottish currency, but mortgages remain in Sterling, homeowners face skyrocketing monthly payments and mass defaults. If the Scottish Government instead legally forces the conversion of those debts into the weaker currency to save homeowners, Scottish banks immediately face massive losses and insolvency, waving your hands about a “transition time” doesn't miraculously pay off that multi-billion-pound currency mismatch.

International bond markets and the EU do not grade sovereign countries on a curve against the English regions; having a “stronger revenue base” than Wales will not fund an 11% GDP deficit when the UK fiscal transfers stop. Other regions can run deficits because the UK Treasury covers them; the moment you secede, that multi-billion-pound shortfall becomes an existential crisis that an independent Scotland would have to bridge entirely alone through massive public spending cuts.

@OnThe7thDay1 Personal attacks 😂

Gillian Mackay attempting to rewrite history by claiming she voted No in 2014 to protect her “place in Europe” is plain historical revisionism. In 2014, the President of the European Commission explicitly confirmed that an independent Scotland would immediately fall out of the EU and have to reapply from scratch. A Yes vote was always a vote to leave the EU. Furthermore, her complaint that Scotland was “taken out of the EU against our will” completely ignores that current SNP and Green economic policy—running a structural £5 billion deficit while unofficially using the British Pound without an independent central bank—would permanently disqualify an independent Scotland from meeting the EU's strict Copenhagen Criteria today. Finally, admitting that Green and SNP supporters “are not enough to secure a sustained pro-independence majority” is a staggering understatement. The combined nationalist Westminster voting intention has plummeted to roughly 33%. Bragging about having the “largest pro-independence majority” based on Holyrood seat mechanics while nearly two-thirds of the electorate actively backs pro-Union parties is not building the “broadest possible movement”; it is desperately clinging to an isolated echo chamber.

The National @ScotNational

5 hours ago

The movement towards Scottish independence is 'bigger than any party,' Greens co-leader Gillian Mackay has said ahead of her appearance at the SNP’s party conference thenational.scot/news/26642175.…

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Questioning my memory of the 2014 campaign is a bold strategy when your own argument relies on completely ignoring the timeline. David Cameron delivered his famous Bloomberg speech in January 2013, 20 months before the Scottish independence referendum. In that televised address, he explicitly committed to holding an in/out referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union if the Conservatives won the 2015 general election. Therefore, every single Scottish voter who walked into a polling booth in September 2014 was already fully aware that remaining in the UK meant facing a potential Brexit vote. Better Together did not “promise” permanent EU membership; they correctly stated that a Yes vote guaranteed an immediate exit from the bloc. Trying to retroactively invent a broken “promise” to excuse the collapse of the nationalist movement is exactly the kind of deception I was pointing out in the first place.

You have just outlined the single economic argument against Scottish independence. By pointing out that “the UK runs structural deficits everywhere outside SE England”, you are acknowledging that the UK Treasury pools wealth from high-revenue areas to subsidise the rest of the country. That fiscal transfer is the only reason Scotland can run an 11% GDP deficit while still funding devolved giveaways without facing immediate insolvency. Asking “Why wouldn't I blame the UK” completely misses the reality of secession. If you vote to leave the UK, you are choosing to cut Scotland off from those South East tax surpluses. On Day 1 of independence, the UK Treasury stops absorbing that shortfall, and forced to plug a multi-billion-pound gap entirely through domestic Scottish tax hikes and severe public service cuts.

@JforIndy @Political_AlanS Not even 1 counterargument 😂

@andalg1 I bet that reply kept you up all night Andrew.

The electoral numbers in these figures absolutely destroy the myth of an ongoing nationalist hegemony. The SNP is languishing at just 26.6%. Even if you add the Scottish Greens at 6.7%, the total pro-independence voting intention has collapsed to exactly one-third of the electorate (33.3%). In stark contrast, the combined pro-Union parties-Labour (22.1%), Reform (20.1%), the Conservatives (11.4%), and the Lib Dems (7.8%)-now command a crushing 61.4% of the Scottish Westminster vote. For a government that constantly claims to represent the “settled will of the Scottish people,” the reality is that nearly two-thirds of the country is actively voting against them. After almost two decades of constitutional grievance and fiscal mismanagement, the SNP is haemorrhaging voters across the spectrum, and the independence movement is retreating to an increasingly isolated core vote. x.com/scotfax/status…

Paul Middleton @ProfPMiddleton

16 hours ago

Three Scottish Independence polls out today one with YES in the lead and two with NO ahead. Should Scotland be an indendent country? Survation YES 52% NO 48% More in Common YES 48% NO 52% YouGov YES 47% NO 53%

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@Fiinnz I take it you can't read Finnz?

@JimboIRA01 Accusing a post of being AI-generated without pointing to factual errors is typically a way to avoid addressing those points Dimmy.

@JimboIRA01 Is that the best reply you have Dimmy?

Retreating from your “cheap shot” to try and blame the UK state for Scotland's deficit is remarkable. A massive portion of Scotland's fiscal gap is driven directly by 17 years of SNP domestic policy at Holyrood, deliberately choosing to run higher public spending on universal giveaways while failing to grow the onshore tax base. Inside the UK, you are shielded from the consequences of those devolved choices because the broader UK tax base absorbs the cost, providing Scotland with £2,720 more per head than the UK average. Your claim that this isn't “solely a problem for an iScot” is completely delusional. On Day 1 of independence, the UK Treasury tap turns off completely. Scotland would instantly inherit an 11% GDP deficit with no central bank, no foreign currency reserves, and no UK pooling to bail you out. You would be forced to cut public services and state pensions immediately to survive.

Parroting my exact words back at me is the typical sign of someone who has completely run out of arguments. You posted a receipt that proved my point about 2014, muttered gibberish about Scotland “voting itself out of the EU”, and retreated into playground mimicry the second you were asked to explain it.😂

@OnThe7thDay1 Trick question?

If you are going to blame Brexit for the small boats crisis by claiming that “the lack of a returns agreement” is the root cause, you should probably check what the Home Office statistics actually looked like while the UK was still in the Dublin Regulation. Andrew Neil is entirely correct to ask for the “net” figures because they completely destroy your argument. In 2019, the final full year before the Brexit transition ended, the UK successfully transferred just 263 asylum seekers out to other EU countries under the Dublin rules. In that exact same year, the UK was legally required to accept 714 transfers in from the EU. In 2020, we returned a mere 105 people, while accepting 882. Far from being a silver bullet for removals, the Dublin Regulation consistently operated as a “two-way street” that made the UK a net recipient of asylum seekers. Claiming that remaining in an agreement which mathematically forced the UK to take in hundreds more people than it sent back would have somehow prevented the Channel crossings is total fiction.

Digging up decades-old historical controversies about a newspaper is a completely desperate attempt to avoid discussing the actual LBC broadcast. The clip Mark McLaughlin shared is visibly watermarked with a giant LBC News logo. The First Minister of Scotland went on national radio and explicitly admitted he cannot guarantee the pension triple lock in an independent Scotland, stating only that he “would want there to be” one. You are frantically crying “Nazi rag” at a journalist purely because you are terrified to defend the reality that a separate Scotland, saddled with a £5 billion structural deficit, would place state pensions at severe risk. Trying to shoot the messenger by copy-pasting Wikipedia summaries about a tabloid doesn't magically fund Scottish retirements or erase John Swinney's disastrous on-camera admission.

@UndisScot Looks similar to inside Culzean Castle

Posting a 2014 Better Together tweet that explicitly states, “Voting yes” is the process for “removing our EU citizenship” inadvertently confirms the very point being made in the original post. During the 2014 referendum, the established position of the No campaign, supported by statements from then-European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, was that a Yes vote meant Scotland would leave the European Union and have to reapply as a new state. By sharing a receipt where Better Together explicitly warned that independence meant losing EU citizenship, you are not refuting the claim that a Yes vote would have taken Scotland out of the EU; you are providing evidence that this was the established reality of the 2014 debate. Your replies are embarrassing now.

The Prime Minister is visiting Scotland to push devolution out of Holyrood and directly into local communities. You are attacking this as a “Dodgy Devolution Deal” while your own First Minister is currently executing the most draconian centralisation of power in modern Scottish history, gutting 32 local councils down to a handful of regional bodies and slashing 14 health boards to two just to cover a £5 billion fiscal black hole. Additionally, posting a glossy infographic of SNP giveaways like “FREE UNIVERSITY TUITION”, “FREE BUS TRAVEL”, and “BABY BOX” completely ignores that these structurally uncosted commitments are exactly what created that £5 billion deficit in the first place. Claiming Andy Burnham is on a “desperate PR exercise” is frankly delusional when he currently enjoys a +9 net approval rating in Scotland, while John Swinney sits at a disastrous -19 and the combined pro-independence vote has collapsed to just 33%. Nearly 9000 followers is incredible 😂

@iammockatory 😂🤭

Replying to a tweet that explicitly calls out the SNP for purchasing a bespoke Survation poll by posting a screenshot of that exact same purchased poll is a remarkable failure of reading comprehension😂. If you look at the fine print at the bottom of the graphic you just posted, it literally admits: “Source: Survation on behalf of the SNP”. You haven't debunked the argument; you have simply provided the visual receipt for the exact PR stunt I was criticising. The reality remains unchanged: when independent polling firms like YouGov survey the public without SNP funding, Scotland backs the Union by a decisive 53% to 47% margin, and combined pro-independence voting intention sits at exactly one-third of the electorate (33.3%). Buying your own poll to hide those numbers doesn't erase them. Another thick as mince reply today.