IT is suggested in Michael Settle's report ("Johnson to be told to ‘stay away from Scotland’ in run-up to 2021", The Herald, November 6) that Boris Johnson would not be an asset to Conservative polling in next year’s Scottish election. In fact, he will probably be an asset to the SNP.

Mr Johnson once liked to be compared to Winston Churchill by portraying his drive for Brexit to that of Winston Churchill’s actions during the Second World War. There is, however, more of a comparison between the two that perhaps he has not considered.

Both were brought in to do a specific job. Churchill was put in place, initially, to avoid losing the war and eventually to win it. Mr Johnson was voted in to achieve Brexit. This chimed with many former Labour voters in northern England and he obtained a large majority. However, in Churchill’s case once he had achieved what he was there to do, he was replaced at the next General Election by Labour’s Clement Attlee. I predict that the same will be Boris Johnson’s fate. He will be replaced by Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer.

If the Tories are to avoid this, they need to replace Mr Johnson as soon as Brexit is achieved. He appears incompetent as a Prime Minister and needs to be replaced with a more middle-of-the-road person with some common sense and brains. I suspect, however, that he will still be there at the next General Election and Sir Keir will be our next prime minister. After all, do you think these former Labour supporters from the north of England are going to continue supporting the Conservative Party with Mr Johnson at its head?

Colin Gunn, Glasgow G73.

MICHAEL Settle’s piece surely drives a coach and horses through the locked gates of unionism and, for good measure, fires an arrow straight to the very heart of "our precious Union".

It was compounded by waking to the smooth, upper-crust – but less than reassuring – tones of Scottish Secretary Alister Jack pontificating on BBC’s Good Morning Scotland on whether the "generation" in the "once in a generation" cliché before a further independence referendum could be stretched to, “10, 20, maybe 25, but certainly not six years”,. The counter-argument, "a material change of circumstances", remains as apposite and effective as ever.

That material change is having any kind of Brexit – deal or no deal – foisted on Scotland when the country voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU, salt rubbed in the wounds with the lie that the only means of ensuring this was to vote No in 2014, exacerbated almost a year ago by the election – comprehensively against Scotland’s express instructions – of a bullish pro-Brexit Conservative Government at Westminster.

When the leader of the UK, the Prime Minister himself, is publicly advised to "stay away from Scotland" in the run-up to 2021 ahead of the Scottish Parliamentary elections and when Boris Johnson is being described as “a monkey on Douglas Ross’s back”, I have to ask: if the Scottish Conservatives can’t stomach him, why should we?

When further pronouncements read "how many Tory candidates for the Holyrood election will put Boris in their leaflets?” and “they won’t want him to come up, they won’t want any photos”, the ba’ is on the slates, to quote a Scottish sporting vernacular.

How on earth can the Conservative and Unionist Party, even under the branch office leadership of Ruth Davidson, a female Artful Dodger, and the chameleon-like Douglas Ross, expect to turn the inrushing tide of backing for a second independence referendum and, thereafter, ever-increasing support for independence itself when their boss in HQ is, by their own admission, an electoral liability north of the Border and an effective recruiting sergeant for a Scotland free from the shackles of a bunch of chancers, cronies and carpetbaggers?

Come on Scottish Conservatives, just admit it, the game truly is a bogey.

Mike Wilson, Longniddry.

BORIS Johnson is my Prime Minister, and as such, I very much hope and expect that he visits Scotland prior to the Holyrood elections next year.

Where is the merit in the suggestion that he be asked to “stay away from Scotland in the run-up to 2021”?

Gordon Casely, Crathes.

YEARS ago I was tasked to lead off a networking session with a talk about communications. I started by pointing out that good communications needed three aspects, namely transmission, reception and understanding, in order that any communications or negotiations could be fruitful.

Tory Westminster has failed to negotiate with Scotland, Wales, both parts of Ireland and the EU. This has led to frustration and resentment, not to bitterness as Douglas Cowe (Letters, November 5) claims.

The latest moves in the Internal Market Bill seek to dumb down our building standards to the benefit of English enterprises and to the detriment of residents (this was supported by all Tory MSPs).

We can joke about Mr Gove’s puffed-up demeanour or that the Prime Minister and the village idiot should not be one and the same, but that is not bitterness, just frustration with an undemocratic and woeful Tory Government.

JB Drummond, Kilmarnock.

EVEN for a party that seems devoid of shame, I was surprised that the leader of the SNP made her comment about the losing side in a democratic process accepting the result ("Democracy on the edge", The Herald, November 5).

The SNP’s reasons for not accepting their own leaders’ self-declared "once in a lifetime’’ and demonstrably democratic result in 2014 are even more nonsensical and illogical than those of Donald Trump.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh EH6.

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