Little Scotlanders and Great Scots

David Hume - a great Scot who flourished under the Union

One of the insidious impacts of SNP propaganda has been to deny wherever possible our double heritage as Scots and Brits. There is a difference between Great Scots - those who of us who not only acknowledge the wealth of Scottish history and the tremendous contribution that we, as artists and engineers, as philosophers and politicians, as soldiers and salesmen, and so on, have made to life in Scotland, the UK and beyond - and Little Scotlanders - those who look inwards, who view the world beyond the Solway and the Tweed with suspicion, who are blind to the many contributions we have made to our fellow Briton and the rest of the world and who can see nothing but insult and lies in even the blandest of statements made with an English accent.

Great Scots do not have an inferiority complex. We do not need to build our own army or establish embassies across the world to be proud of ourselves as Scots, to see ourselves as equal with our nations or to build ourselves a better nation. Little Scotlanders are constantly nurturing grudges, blaming all Scotland's shortcomings on their English neighbours, reassuring themselves that they can go it alone. Little Scotlanders want independence not because they feel strong, but because they feel weak.

There will be a high price to pay if the Little Scotlanders win the referendum. Of course there will be winners - Salmond and Sturgeon will achieve their dream of international status and the SNP apparatchiks will get plum posts in Washington, Paris, Beijing and London. The rest of us will have a high price to pay. Many of us will be made foreigners in the country we grew up in. Those of us whose lives are divided between Scotland and the rest of the UK will be confronted by dual taxes and bureaucracies. Those of us who are based in Scotland will find a hollow victory - entry into the EU, NATO and hundreds of international organisations costly and delayed, the social democractic paradise promised by the SNP an illusion as they fail to raise the high taxes that such a paradise demands (as Denmark and Sweden know well).

We have a choice in the coming referendum. Inward-looking, chip-on-their-shoulder Little Scotlanders who vote Yes to shake off imaginary shackles, or confident Great Scots who vote No and prove to the world that we