SO the leader of the North British Branch of the Labour Party thinks our FM is “the most divisive politician since Margaret Thatcher” (Leonard under fire for saying Sturgeon is similar to Thatcher, The National, January 22).

Can I just quickly list Labour’s values? Foreign wars (continuing), WMD (still supporting), The House of Lords (still queuing up), PFI (Scottish Government still having to foot the bill), and alliances with the Tories (still “Better Together” ?)

I think Richard will manage to work out why myself and thousands of others have stopped voting Labour and should really have a rethink with regard to his party’s policies for Scotland – especially on independence.

Andrew Sanders
Glasgow

IN his interview on the BBC’s Sunday Politics Scotland, “Scottish” Labour’s ringmaster/branch manager Richard Leonard said he would oppose a second independence referendum. So all these RISE members saying vote Labour for independence are talking nonsense.

Leonard also stated in the same interview that his job was to represent the interests of “Scottish” Labour. Not the people but, the provincial self-entitled managerial class of hangers-on whose income stream depends on the maintenance of the Union.

He was challenged on his lack of an alternative budget. He had no answer to this or his position on Brexit.

“Scottish” Labour seem to elect a leader who is more hapless and incompetent than the predecessor every time. Richard Leonard is another clown whose sole purpose is to criticise the SNP no matter how ludicrous or absurd.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

I WAS intrigued to note the furore the recent party political broadcast by the SNP has created, with claims in some quarters that a character within it, a bespectacled hipster, is apparently a parody of a journalist who is a well-known critic of the SNP.

This has led to the inevitable gnashing and wailing of teeth, claims that this is an attack on the media, and so on.

Putting aside the fact, dare I say it, that there may just be more than one such hipster in Scotland, it is intriguing to note that while these individuals spend their energies on attacking this issue, there seems to have been limited criticism from the same quarters over the comments by the newly appointed Tory Vice-Chairman, Ben Bradley MP.

Mr Bradley, as readers may know, is the gentleman who said that low-income families should have vasectomies and that the UK would soon be “drowning in a vast sea of unemployed wasters.” He is just the latest in a long line of Tories who have been outed for their rather unpalatable views.

It is intriguing that the same people bemoaning what may or may not be a journalistic resemblance in a political broadcast seem remarkably quiet when it comes to Mr Bradley. They may of course support Mr Bradley’s view, but one suspects that it is more a case of rank hypocrisy.

This week we mark Burns Night and I am struck by the line from his poem To a Louse, when it comes to this situation – “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us / To see oursels as others see us!”

Alex Orr
Edinburgh