GEORGE Kerevan is right to express his concerns about the non appearance of the long-awaited “Growth Report” as commissioned from Andrew Wilson and his advisers (Establishing our own currency has to happen sooner rather than later, The National, October 16).

Nicola Sturgeon commissioned this report under the auspices of the “Growth Commission”, who were challenged to produce a plan to deal with any short-term deficit after Scotland leaves the UK. The report was due to be published in early 2017 but is, as yet, still to be presented for public scrutiny.

Critically, within the Commissions’ remit is an expectation that they will define which currency an independent Scotland could use and the consequential regulatory apparatus to manage the newly independent economy.

To truly appreciate how critical this issue is, let’s first recap on the 2014 independence referendum. The SNP, in 2014, adopted the proposal that an independent Scotland would continue to use sterling and be regulated by the Bank of England. There was of course merit, indeed precedent, in taking this position as the Irish Republic, even after an armed struggle, essentially maintained parity between the Irish Punt and Sterling for the best part of 30 years after their own independence and the UK could do little about it.

However, the concept of positioning the Scottish independence proposal on keeping sterling and the Bank of England was in my opinion a serious, indeed fatal, strategic error in the campaign.

Of course those who understand economics were well aware that the UK Government could not prevent an independent Scotland, were they to chose to do so, keeping parity with Sterling much as Ireland had done.

However, the weakness of the SNP strategy was that the “ordinary voter” could not understand such a complex position.

The UK recurrently stated “no you can’t”, and unless you were a student of economic history that was a straightforward refusal.

I, like many, squirmed with discomfort when watching Alasdair Darling challenge the SNP leadership on “what is your plan B?”.

There was then nowhere to go with this strategy, certainly not as far as the average voter was concerned, and yet the party continued to dig itself into a hole!

This is where I would go beyond the position taken by George. I fully agree that we need to commit to having our own currency and central bank, but within that positioning we also need to promote the strength of that currency and link it to the comparative strength of the Scottish economy, where we enjoy a balance of trade surplus from our food and drink exports and of course our huge earnings capacity from the vast and in many cases still untapped reserves of natural resources.

Unionists will, at the first hint of us proposing to have our own currency, be at pains to rubbish the thought through the usual fear tactics of saying that such a currency will be a basket case, will lose value against the pound sterling and will raise the issue of how do we repay the supposed £15 billion deficit, forgetting of course to mention the eye watering near £2 trillion UK national debt and chronic trade deficit even before Brexit.

Next time round we need to have all the financial ducks in a row, our own currency, central bank and strong economy as one cohesive package. Nothing less will re assure our target “waverers”.

Ian Stewart, Uig, Isle of Skye