Letters Special: Declaration of independence asserts values of care and kindness

Would Mr Smith’s putative Declaration of Anti-Independence begin with the gambit that "the Scottish people, uniquely among the peoples of the world, do not have the right to determine the form of government best suited to their needs"?

Our Declaration for Independence contains almost everything he wants in his alternative Declaration of Anti-Independence.

He wants the interests of Scots to be balanced against the interests of friends and neighbours in other countries, particularly the weakest and poorest. We affirm the values of care, kindness, neighbourliness and generosity of spirit in our dealings, and say that profit and economic growth should not be pursued at the expense of the wellbeing or habitat of other people or nations.

He wants a society in which people are not defined by their nationality. We want a society "in which no individual is excluded, oppressed or discriminated against on account of their race, colour, faith, origin or place of birth, physical or mental capacity, sex, sexuality, gender or language".

He says Scotland should seek to reduce any barriers to international trade and economic prosperity. We say Scotland should be "free to join international organisations and alliances for purposes of trade and commerce, and for the protection and care of the planet’s natural environment".

He says that we should avoid thinking that "Scotland’s fate is in the hands of others". The last three years have confirmed that so long as Scotland remains in the Union that is precisely the situation that pertains.

Mr Smith seems to think that there is nothing for the people of Scotland to do but lie down and shut up while forces, utterly inimical to our best interests and democratically expressed wishes, tear us out of the EU and attack the very values he espouses. We believe we have a choice.

James Robertson, Newtyle, Angus.

FOR years we've been told Scotland is too small, too poor and too stupid to govern itself; now Mark Smith tells us we'd be too selfish if we became an independent country. Of course, all countries should work for the common good of the planet we share, and I would suggest that while there is no room for complacency Scotland is already doing her bit as world leaders in climate renewables. However, no doubt we need to be a lot more unselfish, such as sending our oil money straight into the bottomless pit of the Westminster Treasury, and not getting much of it back; I mean, what on earth would Scotland do with an oil fund of a trillion dollars? And although Scots voted overwhelmingly to Remain within the European Union, it would be an act of supreme selfishness to let poor old England (who voted to Leave) be thrown over the hard Brexit cliff and hit the rocks below, while Scotland stayed in the EU as an independent nation, treated as an equal among the other independent nations, as is Ireland.

Mr Smith declares that "Scots should avoid thinking that Scotland's fate is in the hands of others or that Scotland has relinquished their right to decide their own destiny". But haud oan. Doesn't almost every other country in the world hold their own fate in their hands and decide their own destiny? Do these countries consider themselves selfish or just normal? I would suggest to Mr Smith that his Declaration of Anti-Independence is well past its sell by date; Scotland's voters aren't buying it any more.

Ruth Marr, Stirling.

KEVIN McKenna asserts that Brexit is “a raw struggle for the soul of England and England alone” ("This is the sort of Scotland that I want to live in", The Herald, October 12). However, the politics of Nicola Sturgeon and Boris Johnson would appear to have much in common.

In order to appease the right wing of his party, the Prime Minister seems willing to regard Brexit as an end in itself, irrespective of the damaging consequences to the UK’s economy, safety and integrity, while our First Minister has declared that “the case for full self-government ultimately transcends the issues of Brexit, of oil, of national wealth and balance sheets and of passing political fads and trends”.

In pursuit of their respective ideologies, the Conservative Party and the SNP risk reducing the citizens of these islands to penury.

Nationalism in both guises has nothing to offer by way of response to the serious issues we face. How will clinging to a romantic notion of nationhood, no matter how it is defined, solve the climate emergency and a collapse of our environment?

Bob Scott, Drymen.

THERE can be few who would disagree with Ian Smith (Letters, October 14) that Scotland would be better avoiding the Catalan referendum experience and subsequent abortive declaration of independence. However, how far does this go to justifying his view that going ahead with a referendum “without UK government approval … is a bad idea”?

The First Minister made the point over the weekend that the route to our independence must be legal, and also attract the necessary political and diplomatic support to allow us to take our place in the international community. She is absolutely correct in this. However, the origin of calls for a Plan B has always been the limitation of Plan A, namely what to do if (when?), the First Minister having approached Westminster for a Section 30 Order, is given the Boris Johnson equivalent of “now is not the time”.

Why would he grant a Section 30 Order? Opinion polls suggest that, in any election soon, the Conservative Party will do well to hang on to half its seats, while some suggest near wipe-out. To that we can add the weekend poll suggesting Yes and No not only level pegging, but with the former moving ahead in the event of Brexit. Given Mr Johnson’s jingoistic rhetoric, it is likely that his election manifesto would be imbued with such as “Britain, the Greatest Country in the World”, as reported over the weekend, which is at odds with granting a Section 30 Order. Decisively, as John Curtice notes in a blog today (October 14), in the event of a Conservative majority in that future election, the door to a Section 30 Order would be “shut and bolted for many years to come”. In Scotland Mr Johnson has little to lose by refusing a Section 30 order, and much to gain elsewhere, as any majority he achieves is unlikely to owe much to Scotland.

So, if Westminster simply refuses, do we just meekly consent? Or do we look for an alternative route forward that could meet the tests prescribed by the First Minister of being legal, as well as politically and diplomatically effective? Should there not be a debate on alternative ways forward that meet such criteria? Could experts in constitutional and international law not devise a proposal?

Moreover, having a Plan B surely implies testing Plan A first (A coming before B) to see what outcomes it leads to, and then – only then – reverting to Plan B, because Plan A has undeniably been unsuccessful. Moreover, the two plans are not opposed to each other, but complementary. Without a Plan B, we are completely dependent on securing a Section 30 order, which, in turn, would encourage Westminster to continue to say “No”. Thus, from the point of view of negotiation an important role of a Plan B is to reduce the chances of Plan A perishing on the rock of “now is not the time”, for let’s face it, at Westminster, it never will be “the time”.

Alasdair Galloway, Dumbarton.

THERE is an identical story running right across the media this morning; that Nicola Sturgeon refuses to rule out a “hard border” with England in the event of independence ("FM refuses to rule out hard border with England after independence", The Herald, October 14). It is not in Ms Sturgeon's gift to rule this out. In 2014 the Unionist parties/Better Together all proclaimed a Scotland/England border would consist of “hard border posts, barbed wire and armed guards”. Is this nonsense still their policy? England exports vastly more to Scotland than we do to them, so this would be an economically illiterate policy to implement. One example: how well would England manage without the huge quantities of gas and electricity they import from Scotland? The cros-Channel electricity interconnectors already run at full capacity. Better to keep open, tariff-free borders as far as possible, I would have thought.

GR Weir, Ochiltree.

NICOLA Sturgeon told Andrew Marr that she would not rule out a hard border between her separate Scotland and England, as a result of Brexit. This would leave Scotland in a cold and lonely place, out of both the UK and the EU, cut off from the two areas with which Scotland does approximately 80 per cent of its trade.

Ms Sturgeon also pledged to be "honest with Scots about the choices they would face in any future referendum". That is in the "pigs might fly" category. She would need to explain how Scotland would fund its public services at the current standard without the Barnett formula, and also how Scotland would fare outside both the UK and the EU, given that it does not meet EU accession criteria in terms of currency, central bank and deficit. Does anyone seriously see her owning up to either of these difficult questions?

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh EH14.

THAT the latest opinion poll suggests 50 per cent of us prefer the notion of an independent Scotland to a post-Brexit UK is a testament, during the worst UK constitutional crisis in 75 years, to the relentless separatist efforts of the SNP.

Now, even more than over the past five years, an hour rarely passes without anti-UK rhetoric from the SNP establishment. Every decision by Westminster is manufactured into an anti-Scottish slight. Whatever progress is made by Downing Street in Brexit talks is twisted, dismissed and voted against in the Commons by SNP MPs in a seemingly Pavlovian manner.

Yet where are the opposition parties? Virtually silent seemingly. At Westminster they're naturally focused on Brexit not Scexit – and here in Scotland they more often than not appear in disarray. SNP politicians plus spin doctors, with their ceaseless nationalist narrative, run rings around them.

Unless the Tories, Labour and LibDems up their pro-UK game, we risk sleep walking into a seriously flawed and irreversible decision.

Martin Redfern, Edinburgh EH10

Read more: A Declaration that can offer an alternative to the SNP