Everyone agrees that a new bridge across the Forth is crucial to the development both of Scotland’s transport system and thereby of its economy.

Whatever one’s politics or one’s views on any particular issue, there can be no doubt that Scotland today has a Government that governs, that accepts responsibility for decision taking, that will face up to tough situations and that is building a strategic policy for the growth of the country.

There is every fiscal sense in Finance Secretary, John Swinney’s request to the UK Treasury to spread the cost of the new bridge over the next twenty years of Holyrood’s capital budgets.

In its rejection of the request, there were two responses from UK Treasury Ministers:

• Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Yvette Cooper, said: ‘The UK-wide public spending framework does not allow for bringing forward spending in this way’.
• Chancellor Alistair Darling described the Scottish Government as: ‘asking to borrow money from budgets that have yet to be allocated, over an extremely long period’.

Let’s take a sharp reality check here.

Alistair Darling and Yvette Cooper, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have committed the entire UK to a volume of borrowing debt never seen before in history. It will take, not just twenty years, but generations to repay and its impact on future budgets cannot even be guessed at

So talking about a ‘public spending framework’ in a context where the Prime Minister has thrown all frameworks out of the window is no more than robot-babble.

And talking about ‘asking to borrow money from budgets that have yet to be allocated, over an extremely long period’ is a very pale description of the fiscal burden the UK Government has now taken on.

These  wafer-thin ‘defences’ for saying no should not be taken seriously for more than the twenty seconds it takes to see through them.

The real strategy is baldly seen in the Chancellors further remarks: ‘If you are contemplating large projects like this you do have to make choices’.

By rejecting the fiscallly responsible suggestion Holyrood has made, the Westminster Labour administration is obviously trying the tired old political trick of divide-and-rule. It is hoping to force the Scottish Government to take such choices and set Scot against Scot and Scots against their Government in consequence.

It is to the credit of the Scottish Government that it has not flinched from this. John Swinney has said that the bridge must go ahead and that other projects will have to be prioritised.

Bridges cannot be built quickly. The future of Scotland’s economy depends upon the main infrastructure being fit for purpose and this work has to start now. This affects all Scots, wherever they live in the country. It would be good to see Scots resisting being made pawns in a bigger game by refusing to have their local territorial fears set against the larger national interest – and supporting the bridge project.