IT IS sometimes hard to remember, given the constant repetition by the SNP leadership that “Scotland voted to Remain” in the 2016 Brexit referendum, that more than one million Scots, 1,018,322, voted for Britain to leave the EU, more than the 977,569 who voted for the SNP in the 2017 general election.

Incidentally, another little bit of obfuscation that Nicola Sturgeon and her acolytes like to indulge in is that the terms of the referendum allow us to assume how Scotland, if it were not part of Britain, would vote on EU membership. How many times have you heard Scottish Nationalists complain about Scotland “being dragged out of Europe?”

Given EU conditions on membership, for example on public spending limits which will be discussed below, assuming Scotland would vote for membership of the EU based on the 2016 vote when it was the membership of the United Kingdom that was being considered is either politically naive or politically dishonest.