Sir Keir Starmer is right to call out the SNP's attitude to the people of Scotland ("PM: Swinney is insulting Scots with 'secret' indy plan talk", The Herald, October 21). As was made clear at the recent SNP conference, John Swinney and the rest of the SNP ’s leadership are focused on convincing people to follow their brand of politics of pretence.
First, they are willing to pretend that the 18 years the SNP has been in power have not demonstrated beyond doubt that its leadership have failed Scotland badly. While the party's core support cannot have missed all the missed targets, failures and scandals as they have unfolded, they simply choose to ignore them. This is critical for John Swinney, as after all he has been at the very heart of the SNP leadership throughout.
Second, the SNP faithful have decided to join John Swinney in pretending that the UK Government will agree to another independence referendum. We all know this will not happen simply on the basis of the result of an election in which people will have voted on all manner of issues. Instead, it would need support for leaving the UK to be supported by a significant majority in Scotland over a sustained period, say 60%-plus for more than six months. Polling has never got anywhere near such an outcome. Without it, no UK government will feel any need to concede another costly, disruptive and hugely divisive second referendum.
The third pretence is embedded in all the vacuous documents churned out by the SNP at great public expense to promote its ambition to break up the UK. This is the greatest pretence of all in that what these sequence of papers have proved is that there are still no detailed answers to the gaps in planning for currency, border controls and securing EU membership, along with nothing to explain how the substantial fiscal deficit revealed in the GERS figures would be reversed.
The SNP does not have a plan for independence, "secret" or otherwise. Instead, it has half-baked manifesto promises built on wishful thinking and superficial explanations. The great pretence for the SNP’s "plan" for independence is that all will be well if only we turn our backs on the rest of the UK, with no honesty in the challenges we would face in the process.
Keith Howell, West Linton.
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What about Labour's record?
In his desperation over losing Wales as well as Scotland, Sir Keir Starmer has challenged John Swinney to “stand on his record”. However, Labour would be required to defend its record in government; it has governed Wales for almost three decades, and has managed devolved responsibilities in England for 15 months.
Sir Keir Starmer has boasted that Labour was the Patriotic Party of England and that is very much how his government has appeared: failing Scotland over jobs promised (69,000); industrial support and investment (overwhelmingly going to England); British Energy based in Aberdeen (13 jobs and actually run from Manchester). The latest kick in Scotland’s teeth is the allocation of seven per cent of the Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund, even when Scotland’s fishing fleet catch much more than half of the fish by weight and value. It seems like Douglas Alexander is even more useless than Ian Murray in “fighting Scotland’s corner”.
If contrast and compare between the different national governments is where “patriotic” Labour wants to fight the forthcoming election (are you paying attention, BBC?), then the SNP should be jumping for joy.
GR Weir, Ochiltree.
Can we afford five more years?
This question needs to be asked: is the SNP up to the job of running Scotland? It wants five more years but has it really been good for Scotland and learned how to run a country in the last 18 years?
It is still making mistakes ("Civil servant wins claim for ministers' unfair treatment", The Herald, October 21). It is not just this case. Right now it is still embroiled in the Sandie Peggie case and the bottle deposit return scheme fiasco has reached the courts and there are other outstanding cases too. If these cases are lost it will cost the hard-pressed taxpayers in Scotland yet more for the mistakes our elected politicians have made. Can we really afford five more years of the SNP, even in coalition, and is independence under an SNP administration viable at all?
Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.
Uniting the Yes campaign
In consistently writing about independence and the unity of purpose, I am delighted that BiS (Believe in Scotland) and the SNP have signed a statement of intent; a united front from the business-orientated BiS and the SNP. With no political affiliation, BiS also hopes to unite all independence campaigning parties for next year’s Holyrood election.
Amazingly, a recent independent UK report from The Resolution Foundation strongly suggests that “Scottish households would be more than £10,000 better off, per year, if the country was independent”.
With the SNP continuing to ride high in the polls First Minister John Swinney is working to secure an outright Holyrood majority next spring and a democratic mandate for independence. This happened in 2011 and can happen again in 2026.
The fact that Scotland has always been rich in resources without reaping the benefits, has to change. The fact that all renewable and fossil- based energy transported south returns to Scotland bearing the highest tariff in the UK, is a disgrace; and along with the disaster of Brexit, the standard of living continues to fall as the cost of living rises.
People of Scotland, arise and have confidence in your richly endowed country, which continues to struggle under confused and insular London-based governments. A fully independent nation would abandon nuclear weapons, honour the environment, bring changes on land reform, pensions, council taxes and the care of its people. A fair and equitable social democratic parliament would work for all.
Grant Frazer, Newtonmore.
Case for the Greens
Having read Kevin McKenna’s recent article (“I’ve never left a party conference feeling as fearful and disgusted as I did that afternoon”, The Herald, October 20), I must tell him he has encouraged me to vote next May for the Greens.
He called himself an “uncomplicated socialist of the authentic left” making special reference, for instance, to “taxing the rich... and bringing in the asylum seekers and the refugees”. Well said.
So far so good, but then he attempts to spoil the attraction of the Greens by his references to his “protected faith beliefs about sex and gender” and the “savagery with which 1,200 people were murdered in 2023” by Hamas which he maintained had not been referred to at the Greens' recent conference.
Although I have not yet decided how I will vote, the gender issue would not prevent me from voting Green. Quite the reverse.
And in relation to Gaza the Scottish Greens issued the following statement shortly after the Gaza attack: “We condemn every act of terror, whether it's Hamas’s evil attack on a music festival or Israel bombing a hospital.Terrorism is to be condemned, regardless of who is responsible. Hamas are quite clearly responsible for heinous acts of terrorism. So are the Israeli government.“ That, I would have thought, is unambiguous.
John Milne, Uddingston.
China can't be trusted
It appears that Isobel Lindsay (Letters, October 20) is frozen in time in Biggar, with the Opium Wars of 1834-1860 being of great historic concern.
It is a measure of her naivety for her to ask our Security Service to divulge what they know of our enemy's intentions.
There is not the shadow of doubt in my mind that we are quietly being targeted, infiltrated and raked over, in order that when the time is ripe the very fabric of our society may be torn asunder, without a shot being fired.
She believes the Chinese are more advanced in their business skills than ourselves. That may well be true, but I would suggest that a great deal of the knowledge, together with much lower operating and living standards, has been acquired by the wholesale theft of Intellectual Property.
The reluctance to Chinese influence indicates that we are right to challenge their intentions. The question is, can they be trusted? After the broken promises on Hong Kong, the answer must be a resounding No.
Robin Johnston, Newton Mearns.
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