LAST week it was reported that the Greek economy unexpectedly shrank by 0.4 per cent in the last quarter of 2016: analysts had expected growth of 0.4 per cent to back up the growth of 0.9 per cent in the third quarter. Greece has to make sizeable debt repayments in July in order to trigger a third (€86 billion) bail-out. However, in return, the IMF wants pension reforms (cuts) and loan write-offs to make Greek debt sustainable in the long term. Germany and Finland have said that they oppose write-offs (they contravene the EU's Lisbon Treaty), and will not participate in a third bail-out without the IMF.

There in a nutshell is the future of an independent Scotland in the EU. Scotland's annual public sector deficit and its likely post-independence share of the UK national debt are in line with those of Greece as a proportion of its GDP. A future Scottish government would have to cut public pensions and the levels of public services provision in order to satisfy its creditors in Berlin, Brussels and Washington, because the current situation, sustained by the UK Treasury and its easy power to borrow in the money markets, would no longer be operable.

Furthermore, the SNP's “independence in Europe” is about to be exposed as the dangerous deceit it is. The election of Marine le Pen in France with her intention to leave the euro and restore the franc, and to ignore Schengen and restore French border controls would finish the EU and its single currency as they currently exist. Geert Wilders and the Netherlands might add to the EU's troubles, and Germany has no intention of funding a fiscal union to help Southern Europe (nor an independent Scotland).

In addition, a recently published study by Mediobanca and a letter sent by Mario Draghi (Director of the European Central Bank) to MPs in Rome confirm that Italy's national debt is not 133 per cent of GDP (the officially acknowledged figure) but 153 per cent, in a country whose GDP per head has not increased at all since 2000, and in aggregate is still seven per cent smaller than it was in 2008. Italy's debt is beyond the point of no return and Mr Draghi insists that "its national central bank's claims on or liabilities to the ECB would need to be settled in full" if it tried to restore the lira and monetary sovereignty. Italy is going down the tubes and it will take the euro with it.

Meanwhile here in Blighty, Tony Blair demands that the UK remains in a deeply flawed EU because, he asserts, voters last June did not know what they were doing. Nicola Sturgeon, for the first time on record, agrees with Mr Blair and congratulates him on his “brilliant” analysis (“Sturgeon: Blair making sense on Brexit vote”, The Herald, February 18). I tend to the view that both Mr Blair and Ms Sturgeon have lost the plot over Brexit. Neither is driven by economic reasoning and literacy: indeed they never discuss them. Both pursue destructive political goals, no matter the costs and consequences to people less secure than themselves.

Richard Mowbray,

14 Ancaster Drive, Glasgow.

THE researchers who promulgate a quick entry into the EU for an independent Scotland (“Yes poll win would put Scotland in EU fast-lane”, The Herald, February 20) must indeed be living in the dreaming towers of academia.

Ignored in their deliberations are salient facts such as only 42 per cent of the total electorate actually voted to remain in the EU in 2016, nor that a majority voted against independence in 2014. Apart from recent referendums, there is the economic scenario. Scotland's deficit renders it ineligible for membership under current EU rules; 65 per cent of Scottish trade is with the UK, versus 15 per cent with the EU. Why then expose an economy already under strain to substantial additional payments as required by the EU if membership is allowed?

All analyses may be rendered void by the forthcoming events of 2017 if the EU and Eurozone disintegrates as a failed political experiment.

Events - such as the Dutch elections of March 15, the French elections in April, the Greek deficit default risk, the German elections in September- guarantee turmoil within the EU and possibly threaten its very existence.

Surely this is no time for Scotland's politicians to urge the electorate to rush to join a fractured superstate where angels would fear to tread.

Elizabeth Marshall,

Western Harbour Midway, Edinburgh.

TONY Blair may well be concerned about Brexit, but there was no need for him to mention Scotland at all.

He surely does not depart from the Unionist mantra that the EU referendum was on a UK basis, so Scottish opinion does not count. His subliminal agenda might be to attribute to the Conservative Government blame for the break- up of the UK.

His claim that Brexit voters did know what they were voting for does not stand up. It was voters for remaining in the EU who were in the dark – the vote to remain was not to remain in the EU, but for a reformed EU, without any indication of the nature of the reforms.

For anti-Brexiters to be now questioning the texture of Brexit makes me wonder whether the bookmakers were refusing to pay out on bets for Brexit on the grounds that we/they did not know what it meant.

I suggest that Mr Blair visits a town like Boston in Lincolnshire, where the indigenous population suffered reductions in pay, and loss of jobs, and restricted access to

services such as housing, health and education from unrestricted immigration, much of which occurred during his own government, when it went “fishing” for more and more immigrants, no doubt to swell the Labour vote. Of course, that all blew up in his face, with traditional Labour voters supporting Brexit.

Douglas R Mayer,

76 Thomson Crescent, Currie, Midlothian.