MOST reasonable people will be persuaded that this Tory-led coalition government has successfully dragged the UK from the 2008 banking collapse mire, which cannot rationally be attributed to any UK political party.

A political success which is unlikely to be undermined by the focus on current Education Secretary Michael Gove’s ‘radical’ approach to reintroducing dated orthodox education values, Yet in six months time this Government offers Scotland’s residents aged 16+, irrespective of birthplace or origins, license to vote for Scottish independence.

If returned to power in 2015, the Tories also threaten to provide the surviving UK with an opportunity to assert its independence in 2017 by voting to withdraw from an unreformed European Union.

Leaving a third, less-expected element to this political three-card trick, it makes irresistible to any future political demand for a Northern Ireland independence referendum, which might even extend across the the wider political electorate of the entire island of Ireland.

So bizarrely, a freely elected Tory Government in 2015 may be credited not merely with presiding over our withdrawal from the EU, but with the break-up of the UK, if unable to persuade these disparate elements to maintain the status quo.

Nick Blitz, South Lane, Haxby.