SNP should put the cheque book away and oppose the EU settlement scheme

On the on hand we have Pete Wishart MP registering his “overwhelming disgust” at the scheme. Former MP Angus Robertson calling it “shameful, disgraceful and demeaning”. Stuart McDonald MP talking about it as one of the “horrible consequences of Brexit”. Alyn Smith MEP saying “there’s no foreigners in Scotland”. All this on the one page of The National (December 29).

At the same time the SNP Scottish Government is greatly assisting the scheme by offering to paying the fees involved for public-sector workers (and to hell with the other EU nationals not fortunate enough to work in the public sector).

Might I humbly suggest that the Scottish Government look again at this situation, put the public cheque book away for a wee while, and campaign against this racist scheme in principle?

I know it will sound a bit too radical, but perhaps it should start by finding ways to thwart the scheme. Maybe if we all applied, regardless of nationality, the process could be ground to a halt. 100,000-plus SNP members would be good place to start. On the other hand I think we are entitled to know now what the Scottish Government’ s policy is towards those EU citizens brave enough to refuse to register? Will the Scottish Government stand by as Police Scotland knock on their doors early one morning with a handful of one-way airline tickets?

Brian Lawson
Paisley

FOR once I find something to disagree with amongst Andrew Tickell’s musings (The treatment of Ireland tells us a lot about the UK and our independence, December 23). According to Mr Tickell, Brexit is an example of the realities and complexities of constitutional change involving Westminster, thereby posing challenges to proponents of Scottish independence.

With 2014’s pro-UK arguments about retaining EU membership or political and economic stability now being blown out of the water, I suspect Mr Tickell has touched upon the key Unionist line in any forthcoming indyref2: “look at the chaos of Brexit – can you face going through that again?”

This argument is fundamentally weak – highlighting the discomfort of a short-term journey rather than challenging the attractiveness of the end destination – but it is one that should be countered rather than amplified.

The key difference is that independence is a well-trodden path, whereas Brexit Britain is blundering through uncharted territory. The UN has welcomed, on average, one newly independent member to its fold every year since the mid-1980s. Yet no member state has ever before left the EU (let alone in quite such a dysfunctional manner). Scotland would be aspiring to do something normal; the UK is (it seems) intent on doing something completely abnormal.

Furthermore, while Brexit has indeed been a sobering insight into hard-nosed international negotiation, it has also served to illustrate just how many strong negotiating cards Scotland holds.

I am not a fan of burning more fossil fuels, but Scotland has been blessed many times over. Think of the natural resources required on these islands in the low-carbon, climate-heated world of the decades to come: Scotland has the fertile land and the fisheries for local food production, it has huge quantities of renewable energy, and not least, it has the water.

Can there be more powerful bargaining chips?

Add those to the ability to close down the UK’s nuclear weapons, and Westminster’s hope that an independent Scotland might agree to take on a share of the UK’s vast, near-£2-trillion of accumulated government debt, and the power asymmetries between the UK and the EU to which Mr Tickell refers do not necessarily apply or exist in the same way here.

More fundamentally, perhaps, I am optimistic about how the other parts of the UK and Ireland might react to Scotland choosing its own path. I know no-one in rUK who would want their government to pursue punitive or spiteful policies in that situation. In time I look forward to something akin to a Nordic model; neighbours making their own decisions but remaining close friends and collaborators.

Let’s hope that 2019 is the year in which we begin to find out.

Chris Hegarty
North Berwick

THANK you for printing my recent letter (Letters, December 18), but I was a tad disappointed at the heading you placed above it: “Anti-EU Yessers must not be allowed to scupper our cause” [my italics].

In the letter itself, I carefully worded my plea to them to “alert themselves” to the potential danger of making an unwise choice on the EU question after Scotland becomes independent of the UK: each individual Scot needs to think this through before voting for or against independence.

Just as we all should, in fairness, know and understand the facts on what is good and bad about the English/Scottish Union, so also we should approach a Scottish referendum, having all sat down and done our homework to find out how the European Union actually works, and if necessary come to terms with the organisation, as opposed to uncritically accepting what so many British newspapers say of it.

Scotland faces a set of options not unlike what is facing the UK right now, namely to: 1) Remain in the EU (or perhaps EEA/EFTA); 2) Stick with the British Union; or 3) Take the route of trying to build a huge series of individual trading agreements, under WTO rules, with as many countries as we can get the ear of.

We mustn’t twist anybody’s arms, but surely this a bit of a no-brainer?

Michael F Troon
Gauldry, Fife