Boris Johnson’s can-do attitude towards the UK is refreshing

It very much IS up to the UK Parliament, which has a duty of care to ensure the Edinburgh Agreement and the “sovereign will” of the 55 per cent majority of the Scottish people are respected and upheld and he should be saying so loud and clear, but instead treats them as in Monty Python’s Life of Brian – “he’s a very naughty boy”. After losing the 2014 referendum Nicola Sturgeon simply circumvented the result by introducing the new buzzwords “material change” to manipulate for another referendum and JM Mr Corbyn, in trying to appease everyone, has done as Theresa May and appeased no one.

Although not a natural Conservative supporter it made a refreshing change to see and hear Boris Johnson’s upbeat, positive, can-do attitude backing Britain in contrast to Nicola Sturgeon’s doom and gloom, cliff-edge-catastrophe, end-is nigh monologue.

Whether Mr Johnson can succeed in renegotiating the withdrawal agreement is debatable but it wouldn’t matter if he brought back gold ingots from EU, we know beforehand SNP will trash any settlement while Labour simply shoots its big toe off.

Allan Thompson, Bearsden.

THE fears of many that democracy in UK plc is under threat must surely now by vindicated by the latest Remainiac gimmick of pop-up Prime Ministers. In this big top political circus it seems that anyone can throw their hat into the ring, although senility appears a distinct advantage.

Morag Black, Houston.

FIDELMA Cook’s article (“I tell myself this is the real world. The other was just a bad dream”, Herald Magazine, August 17) demonstrates that, although her body may be weak, her mind is still sharply perceptive.

I expect you will receive letters from those with blinkered vision who accuse her of hyperbole or even feverish frailty. To them I say this: the Germans who voted the National Socialists into power in July 1932 were promised a stable currency and a better economy: not the Gestapo and concentration camps. The Britons who voted to leave the European Union in June 2016 were promised sunlit uplands: not the suspension of Parliament and emergency provisions to prevent shortages of food and essential medicines.

As facts unfold there is a time when the wearing of blinkers becomes morally indefensible. History is repeating itself and this time it is not the Reichstag that will burn.

Peter Martin, Muir of Ord.

WHEN Peter A Russell (Letters, August 16) quotes Viviane Reding, then Vice-President of the European Commission Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, that “a new independent region would, by the fact of its independence, become a third country with respect to the Union and the Treaties would, from the day of its independence, not apply anymore on its territory”, he does no more than offer another personal opinion of another senior EU official as he did in his earlier letter.

What Ms Redding’s letter is not is the official Commission response which Mr Russell refers to, as there never was one. This would only have been forthcoming had David Cameron, as political head of the UK, put the question to the Commission of Scotland’s future status post-independence. But he never did. Indeed, Angus Robertson reported at the time that the Commission “refuses to clarify to the Scottish people what a vote for independence would actually mean”.

However, when the late Robin Cook, while still UK Foreign Secretary, made a speech claiming independence would “jeopardise Scotland’s position in the EU”, in reply “a spokesman for the Commission” said that “Scotland could be admitted to the EU on the same day that it became independent after completing a series of formalities”. Therefore, even if formally true that Scotland as new state would not be a member on independence, this makes clear that it could become a member, having completed “certain formalities”, and moreover“ on the same day”, by, for instance, using the time between “a Yes vote, when it was clear Scotland would become independent, but before independence was declared”. Alternatively, Scotland could “achieve the same by joining EFTA/EEA and entering the EU’s Customs Union”.

Thus, the argument Scotland would be out of the EU on independence – Scexit – is crafted from a carefully delimited view of the effect of independence, impliedly assuming that Scotland would not use the time between a Yes vote and independence to negotiate an agreement with the EU or, failing that, with EFTA. As George W Bush once said “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”.

Alasdair Galloway, Dumbarton.