Public spending is one of the biggest talking points around at the moment.

Last week, Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth said she could not rule out further cuts to teacher numbers when speaking about “tough choices foisted on us by an incoming Labour Government”.

Read our report here 👈

That prompted a response from one of our readers who argued that the Government should instead be cutting back on spending on independence.

Read that letter here 👈

Today, however, a correspondent maintains that the administration is right to make independence its "overarching objective and priority".

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Peter Curran of Kirkliston writes:

"Charles Bannerman's letter (August 17) poses the question: is spending on independence-related matters more important than education? Leaving aside that such questions, in one form or another, are a regular feature of unionist supporters' letters, the core question implied is 'how do governments prioritise their objectives?'.

That is a complex subject that can't be addressed fully in a letter, but let me offer the essentials in this case.

A government has many priorities dependent on its core beliefs and values, from day-to-day matters of policy to major overarching fundamental political beliefs, as expressed in the manifesto that put it in office. In a settled state (when there is such an entity) the nature of its constitutional government is not one of them.

The state of the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is manifestly not such a settled constitutional state and has not been for a very long time. The Union is a failed conglomerate, the sad and confused remainder of a lost Empire, with citizens in every one of its four component parts in various degrees of challenge to its existence. The devolutionary structure has failed it, with catastrophic results epitomised by the14 wasted and lethal years of Tory Government, ones which won't be remedied by the feeble pale Tory replacement for it: the Starmer Government.

The Scottish devolved government was elected on a mandate to free the Scottish nation from that suffocating, disintegrating Union.

The independence question is therefore the overarching objective and priority of the Scottish Government, since no other priority of government, for example education, can ever be delivered fully while Scotland remains in that Union. But it does not preclude it governing as effectively as it can within the temporary limitations of the Union.

What's left of the Union is beyond any reform, beyond any remedy."