I WAS contacted a few days ago by one of your Letters regulars, who was wondering why I’ve been absent from these pages for many months. Was it because I now regret leaving the Labour Party and joining the SNP? I’m happy to say here: not a bit of it.

My only regret about leaving Labour is that I didn’t do it sooner. The party has a fantastic history of which it should be proud, and it’s a crying shame to see it reduced to its current parlous state. It’s now a party that can’t quite decide whether anti-Semitism is a bad thing, led by a man who appears to have learnt nothing from his decades in politics. Anyone who thinks Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro deserve respect for their destruction of Venezuela really needs help. Mr Corbyn and his acolytes inhabit a universe where dogma triumphs over people; the current Labour leadership team would be disastrous for all of us if it ever got anywhere near the levers of power.

I certainly don’t have any regrets about joining the SNP. Scotland’s public services aren’t perfect, but the SNP has done a decent job in government during a decade of austerity. There’s no doubt Nicola Sturgeon has been put in an awkward position by calls for a second independence referendum, but I think she’s succeeded in treading a fine line; maybe those shoes helped.

I agree with Ian Macwhirter ("Why pragmatism and patience are order of the day for SNP", The Herald, October 10): the SNP, in government, as a party and as individual members, needs to show pragmatism and patience just now. The situation with Brexit is very fluid and I suspect most people have stopped trying to follow its twists and turns. Much as I’d like to see Brexit stopped, I can’t see it happening. David Cameron (remember him?) navigated the UK up the proverbial creek and has left us without a paddle. Even if we could arrange a second EU referendum and voted to stay in, would the rest of the EU want perfidious Albion back? Large parts of the UK have always harboured the “short-sighted Little Englander prejudice” Lord Kerr refers to today ("Scots should rally behind the People's Vote cause", Agenda, The Herald, October 11); best we leave them to it and concentrate on building an open, fair and decent society here in Scotland.

The reason, dear Letters Editor, I haven’t sent you any of my scribbles for a while is simple and nothing to do with politics: we had a major house fire. A horrible experience, and it brought home how dreadful it must be for those millions who lose their homes every year in violent circumstances of war or natural disaster, perhaps with loved ones killed at the same time. We can look forward to getting back into a comfortable home in a few months’ time; for many millions of families, all they can look forward to is years of misery and hardship in a tent in a squalid camp. Surely the wealthy and powerful nations of this world can do more to help those whose lives have been destroyed by the forces of wicked men or by Nature.

Doug Maughan,

52 Menteith View, Dunblane.

BEGINNING what is surely a remarkably self-centred contribution from a retired diplomat who has been at the heart of international affairs, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard tells us that, although he was not especially good at history when a pupil at Glasgow Academy, he “learnt enough to spot a historic mistake”, strangely forgetting to mention his 1963 degree in Modern History from Pembroke College, Oxford – perhaps because that institution happens to be in England.

What is more, he refers to his old school’s casualty list from the 1914-18 war together with the Great Depression of the 1930s and German bombing in the 40s as though his own personal experiences were unique. And again, we are told that it was Glasgow Academy where he learnt that “the key democratic principle is informed consent”.

So we may look to the first “People’s Vote” for membership of the then EEC (now the EU), the Referendum of 1975. But we would look in vain for informed consent.

In the notorious 36-page Memorandum to Ministers, Foreign and Commonwealth Office mandarins at Whitehall listed the areas where the UK would definitely lose sovereignty and suggested unpredictable further losses as European integration progressed. Moreover any unpopular EEC-derived legislation was not to be attributed to Brussels for at least 30 years, by which time, it was assumed, integration would have become sufficiently complex as to make withdrawal practically impossible.

So where was Lord Kerr at this time? From 1974 he had been Private Secretary to the head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It is inconceivable that he was unaware of this document and the disgraceful deception of voters by Ted Heath’s assurance that joining the EEC involved no loss of sovereignty.

And we find Lord Kerr, from 1990 to 1995, the crucial period of the transformation of the EEC into the much more comprehensive European Union, in an indisputable position of power as a member of Coreper (the Committee of Permanent Representatives), arguably, since it prepares the agendas for European Council summits, a more powerful body than even the European Commission.

His lordship’s other interests include charitable, cultural, academic and financial subjects and must involve high-level networks he has been able to build over such a career. If he is now seeking popular support for his plan to alter a treaty of his own devising, he should suppress a supercilious attitude to the uncooperative masses which is betrayed by his suggestion that we should grow up or by describing us as “short-sighted Little Englanders”.

More of the electorate, in fact, voted to leave the EU than have ever before voted for anything (and some of us are Scots).

Mary Rolls,

58 Castlegate, Jedburgh.

ALAN Dickson (Letters, October 11) wants to know the logic in being desperate to stay in EU while being desperate to leave the UK. Dead easy.

It’s the UK that dumps Trident, the world’s most powerful machine for the mass killing of human beings on us, against the will of parliament and people. The EU does not. It’s the UK that drags us into disastrous wars for Big Oil. The EU does not. It’s the UK that robs of our democratic rights, by tying us into a parliament where we are condemned to be outnumbered and overruled in perpetuity. The EU enshrines core democratic principles in its constitution.

As the chaos and confusion that is Brexit drags us ever deeper into the mire of uncertainty, these vital facts must be kept clearly in mind.

Brian M Quail,

2 Hyndland Avenue, Glasgow.

IF the DUP votes down the Budget, does Theresa May get her money back?

David Hay,

12 Victoria Park, Minard.