I agree with much of Neil Mackay’s article ("Why it is time for politics in Scotland to adopt Ulsterisation", The Herald, January 16). He is right that arguments about when a second independence referendum should happen are unproductive. But, as someone involved in a small way in the Good Friday negotiations in Belfast, I don’t agree that the border polls formula adopted in the Agreement there would serve us better.
The requirement for a referendum when it “appears to the Secretary of State” that a voting majority wants Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom is integral to the Agreement. It had long been recognised that it would be hard to justify Northern Ireland staying in the UK if a majority, even by one vote, wanted to go. And the Agreement wouldn’t have been possible without this acceptance.
However inescapable, carrying out a transfer of sovereignty in Northern Ireland with a tiny majority would be scary. It is hard to see how Northern Ireland’s community divisions could calmly withstand a transfer if the voting margin is in low single figures.
Applied to Scotland, the 50%-plus-one rule might not have such alarming results as in Northern Ireland. But it would be a recipe for the new sovereign state to start with bitter divisions. Unlike Northern Ireland, we have more choice.
Most nationalists in Scotland seem confident that demography is with them – that younger people are more independence-minded than their parents, certainly their grandparents. If this confidence is well placed, would it not be far better to have patience? Demanding a referendum, even with only a bare chance of winning, offers the prize of a badly divided new nation and negotiations with a neighbour which doesn’t take its new status seriously. Waiting for consistent polling majorities of around 65% for independence, and a permanent pro-independence majority in the Parliament, offers the more attractive prospect of the then unionist minority accepting a settled will for independence. And the main neighbour would see that it was dealing with a firm new reality, and be less tempted to play games in negotiations.
Persuading politicians to take this long view would be difficult. They would face strong pressures from their noisier supporters. The time before a referendum on this basis might have to be filled with protracted negotiations for better devolution terms, at risk of boring everybody. But a referendum won by the skin of the teeth is almost certainly not a result worth having for the sake of the wider nation, even if winning gives the victor a sense of victory.
Northern Ireland is stuck with its system. We can do better. And look how unsatisfactory applying the 52%-48% Brexit result has been – even to Brexit supporters.
Geordie Fergusson, retired diplomat, London.
Read more letters
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- Recording the shameful decline of the US and the UK
Labour and the last straw
In her Unspun column ("Honesty in politics matters but people want more", The Herald, January 16) Hannah Brown reported UK Labour's Viceroy in Scotland, Ian Murray, as saying: "We were honest [in July] in telling the public that it will be tough. Perhaps people don't like honesty". The article concluded by saying "So honesty does matter but people want more. They want delivery".
The Labour Party, back in 2014 and as part of the Better Together campaign, promised Scotland the earth. According to Gordon Brown, Holyrood would get something close to full federalism – Devo Max within the UK if we voted No. Those promises shifted polling shortly before the referendum from 52% Yes to a No vote and then, immediately after that vote, the promises melted like the proverbial snaw aff a dyke.
When the post-referendum Smith Commission sat to decide which items should be added to devolved responsibilities, the UK Labour representatives from Scotland voted against more new responsibilities being devolved than even the Tories did – and the Tories were always the ones most against devolution for Scotland So, in July last year Labour campaigned on a "change" platform, but failed to include in its manifesto that its changes would include dropping promises to compensate Waspi women; failed to include an intention to hit state pensioners by withdrawing the universal winter fuel payment, and failed to continue the fight to save Grangemouth, amongst other things. Folk will be forgiven for thinking that those particular "changes" came far too quickly to have only been thought of, and their impact on any UK-wide Labour vote evaluated, since July 4 and, for Mr Murray to imply that Scotland's people are at fault for "not liking honesty" is rubbing salt into the collective wounds.
Going back to the Brexit vote of 2016: the people of Scotland – having been conned by the Better Together approach in 2014 – weren't fooled when the same approach was apparent during the lead-up to the Brexit vote. The result in Scotland, at 62% Remain, was notably different to that south of the Border, where the campaigning style for the 2014 referendum probably bypassed most folk.
Twenty-one years ago my wife and I returned to Scotland, following a spell living and working in London and South-east England. On our return we decided to vote SNP until independence was achieved, following which we expected to revert to voting Labour, as was our usual choice wherever we'd lived. It didn't take long to conclude that, if/when independence is achieved and the only "Labour Party" standing for Holyrood is the remnant of the UK Labour Party branch office, they'll get neither vote. That so many of the people of Scotland realise that they were conned, yet again, to vote Labour will, hopefully, be the final straw for the party branch office in Scotland, and they'll find their back broken by their own selective honesty.
Ian Waugh, Dumfries & Galloway Indy Hub, Dumfries.
• Honestly, what a foot in mouth clanger from Scottish Secretary Ian Murray who contends that the voters don't like honesty. I would suggest that what the voters don't like is being spun fairy stories and taken for mugs by the said Labour Party, whose falsehoods during the General Election campaign started to unravel within days of coming to power.
Mr Murray is no novice to politics. He should know that blaming the voters is never a good idea, but with the opinion polls crashing around him, he is clearly running scared as his party stacks up the gaffes, alienates the very voters he criticises, and kills their chances of getting into power at Holyrood in 2026.
Ruth Marr, Stirling.
Cliché corner
The First Minister is certainly leaving no cliché unused as he defends his Government against the accusations of incompetence by his political opponents. I seem to remember that originally it was a laser-like focus, quickly followed up by devoting every fibre in his being and of course no stone was being left unturned. More recently it was proceeding at pace and today an unrelenting focus.
The big question is will he soon declare a National Emergency and thus be able to deploy them all together?
Mike Flinn, West Kilbride.
We must have a land tax
I take issue with Leah Gunn Barrett's Keynesian assertion that "only government spending can get an economy out of an economic downturn" (Letters, January 16).
On that logic, maximising deficits would bring the greatest growth, which is patently not the case. On the contrary, interest on government debt swallows ever-more of GDP; as Adam Smith said, "the only good budget is a balanced budget".
The root cause of economic underperformance is land monopoly and speculation, which prices all too many commercial and industrial sites outwith the reach of SMEs.
The way to end this abuse of our common wealth is to recover all of publicly-created land value as revenue, while untaxing work and trade.
George Morton, Rosyth.
The crashing of the USA
I hope America won’t mind me saying this and yes, I accept that things here in the UK are as bad – partly because we tend to ape what happens in the US but with less glitz and grinning. However, watching what is going on right now is like watching the biggest slow-mo car crash in history, because it’s been trailered since 2016.
But now it's impacting and it involves every motorway and every car on every motorway. The noise of societal implosion and the twisting metal of norms and tradition is deafening, the spectacle is horrific – so horrific we cannot turn away.
The stench of destruction, fumes and fire is choking, even from this side of the pond.
We put our own demise on hold by joining the EU then threw that away with Brexit in that same fateful year: 2016.
We should recognise end-of-empire cataclysm when we see it (especially the unacknowledged sort we’ve had in Britain) because empires are not defeated from outside, they are imploded from within by self-destructive forces.
Dear America, that is the stage you are in. Therapy won't help. There is just too much noise and horror for you to be able to see and hear as the edifice is brought down around you by your fellow Americans (and a South African).
Amanda Baker, Edinburgh.
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