THIS column should be able to address Holyrood’s agenda for improving prosperity and enhancing life chances.

Instead, it warns that Scotland remains hostage to a Tory autumn statement aimed at rescuing a shrinking UK economy that is failing to recover from the pandemic.

America, Canada, Italy, France, Japan and Germany are all doing better than the UK; this isn’t SNP analysis but is accepted by the governor of the Bank of England, the Commons Treasury Committee and the BBC News economics editor, among others.

All major economies face the challenges of rising global energy prices, war in Ukraine and inflation, but only the UK had a disastrous Tory mini-budget, and only England and Wales voted for Brexit.

According to thinktank UK In A Changing Europe, post-Brexit trade barriers led to a six per cent increase in UK food prices (2019-21), while a former Bank of England expert confirms “the UK economy… has been permanently damaged by Brexit… If we hadn’t had Brexit, we probably wouldn’t be talking about an austerity budget.”

That’s reality, not SNP ‘spin’.

Brexit opportunities are turning to ashes, with mounting evidence that Brexit’s promises – “the day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards” (Michael Gove) – misled the public and have proved to be an incalculable misjudgement.

Unless the Brexit-supporting minority in Scotland can accept that their democratic vote to leave the EU was betrayed by a false prospectus, and they then join the majority in recognising that Brexit was a massive mistake, Scotland will be unable to move forward. That’s also reality.

In the Financial Times, the First Minister referred recently to Labour’s Brexit “conspiracy of silence”.

If Labour and Tories refuse to acknowledge that England and Wales made the wrong call on Brexit, Nicola Sturgeon argues, “the only way for Scotland to regain EU membership and the economic benefits it brings is as an independent country.”

The UK has wasted a decade arguing about Europe, deploying austerity to rearrange the Titanic/Brexit deckchairs to stop the UK economy sinking as our future gets poorer.

It will require commitment from all of us, yes, but Scotland’s safe harbour lies outside the UK, independent in Europe.