THE First Minister and her party are trying to frame policies for a different world from that which is actually taking shape. Despite an impending energy crisis the SNP has imposed a moratorium on fracking (“Fracking row: Moratorium is extended”, The Herald, October 9). The party's supporters want to abolish the much-misunderstood Barnett formula (Iain A D Mann, Letters, October 9), despite the fact that oil tax revenues are very unlikely to recover to the level ($115 per barrel, as Mr Salmond's own 2013 referendum White Paper informed us) needed to give an independent Scotland a fiscal balance.

But the most egregious example of this widespread nationalist tendency not to live in the real world is Ms Sturgeon's reaction to the launch of the No campaign on membership of the EU. She has made it clear that if the UK voted to leave the EU against Scotland's wishes, then this would spark a second Scottish independence referendum. (“Campaign launched to quit EU”, The Herald, October 9). I appreciate that she feels that she has to say this, but it is a bluff. The UK-wide polls and the Scotland polls are moving strongly in favour of leaving. Even if the referendum were to result in a 51 per cent rUK vote to leave and a 51 per cent Scotland vote to stay, the First Minster would have the support of a deeply divided country, but no mandate for a winnable independence referendum. And here is why.

Earlier this week (October 7), Nigel Farage in the European Parliament did Scotland and the UK a great service. He provoked President Francois Hollande (who in the company of Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, was making a courtly visit to the august Strasbourg institution) to make the following statement: "If we don't want to strengthen Europe ...the only road is for those who are not convinced of Europe to leave Europe ... Do you really want to participate in a common state?" M. Hollande's outburst confirms that total political union is still the goal of the insiders. Britons, with our long tradition of liberty, the limited state, free trade and respect for private property, democracy and the rule of law (not to mention opposing continental centralising regimes for more than 500 years) will not stand for that.

The implication for Scottish nationalists is that they want independence just to give it away to Germany and France in a European super-state. That is a measure of how much they bitterly resent the UK, and particularly our tolerant and gentle neighbours in England. But whatever the EU referendum result, from the SNP point of view, it is either the UK or the EU. And in both cases independence is the dead-end idea that people less susceptible to political fantasies have always known it to be.

Richard Mowbray,

14 Ancaster Drive, Glasgow.