Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael misses the point about the referendum campaign (No vote will kill appetite for separate Scotland for good, says Carmichael, News, May 18).
This is about the restoration of full powers to the present "lame duck" Scottish Parliament, about securing its future independence and, above all, about constitutional parity with its counterpart in Westminster.
This needs to be about equality of parliaments - ie, the transfer of all the remaining "reserved powers" from Westminster to Holyrood - as well as the recognition of Scotland as a nation state in its own right.
Transfer of full powers is crucial. Granting only partial powers, as Carmichael suggests and as the Labour Party also proposes, is not enough. This is the critical weakness of any sort of federalism, indeed of any sort of devolution. Scotland's parliament should not be subservient in this manner, nor Scotland as a nation.
Recently, Gordon Brown spoke of the Union as an "equal partnership of nations". But it can never be so under the present dispensation. Years ago, Donald Dewar offered the concept to Scots of "independence within the United Kingdom". Although never followed up, this would appear to offer the prospect of a viable solution, based on true equality of parliaments. In this way, the United Kingdom would not be "broken up" but modernised, decolonised and democratised into a confederation of British nations, enjoying equal status inter se, all with autonomous parliaments.
A Yes vote would enable the above to happen. A No vote would mean this fight for democracy has to continue and, at the very least, there needs to be a vote on the second question, which was denied us: that is, the crucial question of more powers.
Randoph Murray
Rannoch
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