GORDON Brown has waded into the debate about Scottish independence with a revelatory speech, claiming that Scotland could not afford the generous welfare state that it “enjoys” without significant subsidy from the English taxpayer.

There must be some mistake. Scotland has been governed by Labour or the equally left-wing SNP for 17 years. Its level of public expenditure and state intervention are higher than in England.

According to the socialist thesis, this should have yielded world-class public services. All that government spending should have provided a continuous economic stimulus.

You would have thought that transferring all that money from wealth creators to state bureaucrats would have worked its “magic” by now?

The truth is different. Scotland, like many high-spending states, has pitifully low levels of life expectancy; it also has one of the highest rates of unemployment in northern Europe.

Its economy is the only part of the UK which is stagnant and it remains dependant on English taxpayers for many of its subsidised services.

In making the case for the “better together” campaign, Brown has shown us how once again how socialism fails the people it claims to protect.

Cllr Martyn Cox Westhoughton North and Chew Moor