I WONDER if Alyn Smith has torpedoed his chances of becoming SNP deputy leader by revealing the truth behind SNP claims about EU membership in their referendum campaign (“Smith enters the battle to become SNP deputy leader”, The Herald, July 15)? The claim was that as we left the UK we would glide seamlessly via a smooth transition into EU membership on the day of independence. Mr Smith now confirms that those who rejected such claims at the time had got it dead right.
The SNP's case he tells us was not "prepared properly". "We [the SNP] used words like 'automatic' over a process that is anything but automatic". What he is telling us, in fact, is that the SNP was prepared to take us to – in Nicola Sturgeon's words – "the brink of disaster" by ripping us out of the EU on the basis of what can only be described as a lie.
As to Ms Sturgeon's current performance as the defender of the democratically dispossessed, the irony is all too apparent. Nor will she achieve anything other than what she wants to achieve – to be told that in any negotiation Scotland will not be treated any differently from the UK as a whole. So why not spare us the faux outrage and set her mind to contributing to that process? That's a rhetorical question.
Colin Hamilton,
3 Braid Hills Avenue, Edinburgh.
AHEAD of their first meeting (“May heads to Scotland in bid to save ‘special Union’, The Herald, July 15) the First Minister is quoted as responding to the new Prime Minister’s “Brexit means Brexit” quote, by saying that equally from her perspective for Scotland “Remain means Remain”. There are two fundamental flaws with Nicola Sturgeon using this turn of phrase.
First, huge numbers of those who voted Remain in Scotland did so with no intention that their vote should be used by the SNP to try to break up the UK. As the First Minister is well aware, the EU referendum was only ever about the UK’s membership of the EU, not about individual parts of the UK, as the SNP now wants to portray it.
Secondly, the rationale of respecting the outcome of a referendum clearly only applies for the First Minister when it suits her interpretation of events. Barely a week has gone by since the September 2014 independence referendum without the First Minister or one of her SNP colleagues speculating about how a second referendum could soon overturn that result.
It is not a question of “Remain means Remain”. Rather Nicola Sturgeon intends that no referendum result will be sustained unless it reflects the SNP’s view of the world.
Keith Howell,
White Moss, West Linton, Peeblesshire.
IN your photograph of the Standing Council for Europe, set up by Nicola Sturgeon (“Single market access and free movement are ‘red lines’ over EU”, The Herald, July 15), I note that there is a representative from the Scotch Whisky Association.
There is however no place, it seems, for a representative from any Scottish fishing organisation. A sign, perhaps, that the Scottish fishing industry is already expendable in Nicola Sturgeon's delusional quest for Scotland to remain in Europe.
James Kelly,
4 Charles Drive, Larbert.
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