Scotland cannot set its budget until Rishi Sunak does his sums

The very fact that Forbes, like Nicola Sturgeon and the rest of her Government, is not allowed by law, as she puts it, to overspend on whatever the UK Treasury gives the Scottish Government puts decidedly into focus the dilemma Scotland has always had dealt within the Barnett Formula.

The other huge problem with Boris Johnson’s Government is the mere fact of little, if any, communication between itself and the Scottish Government, not forgetting the other two devolved nations. This has always been the problem with this and the previous two Tory governments belonging to Theresa May and David Cameron.

Whenever there is a decision arising from the UK Government that has a detrimental effect on Holyrood, the Tory excuse is given that they always seek to work constructively with Scotland. Aye, that’ll be shining bright then. The same comment was given with regard to Kate Forbes’s current problems with Sunak deciding to forgo the Autumn Budget. Left to Forbes to find out about it on her Twitter account, the UK Treasury said that it has sought to work constructively with the Scottish Government “at all stages of the pandemic and there is nothing to stop the Scottish Parliament from passing their Budget before the UK Budget”.

Well, again you couldn’t make it up on the level of intelligence that assumes to run our UK united country. How on earth do you arrive at a long-term Budget without knowing what the Budget income is?

C’mon Rishi Sunak. Get your pencil and paper and rubber out and start doing your sums. That is, if you know where to begin. The clock is ticking.

Alan Magnus-Bennett
Fife

I WAS a bit dumbfounded by Michael Russell’s article in last week’s Seven Days (Only independence will remove the scar of socially corrosive land ownership). The Scottish Government needs to demonstrate now that it has the courage and conviction to reform land ownership, because if it won’t do it now why should we believe that it will do it once independence has been won?

The lack of radical action since the Land Reform Act in 2016 is quite shameful. Yes, there have been baby steps, but nothing that suggests a commitment to implementing the recommendations of the Land Reform Review Group that were presented as far back as 2014.

READ MORE: Only independence will remove the scar of socially corrosive land ownership

Also, for Mr Russell to praise Lesley Riddoch and Norway’s hutting movement in the same article as he lauds the “importance of localism” was breath-taking! Ms Riddoch has been loud and eloquent on the undemocratic centralism of the Scottish Government and she has provided similar statistics to those of the hutting movement, demonstrating that Scotland does not compare favourably to Norway in respect to localism as well as hutting (Norway has 429 municipalities, Scotland has 32 councils – how’s that for localism?). If localism is important, why is the Scottish Government not practising it?

In the same Seven Days, Andrew Tickell makes a heartfelt plea for more politicians like Alison Thewliss who are passionate about, and successful in, achieving real improvements for people and society. Mr Russell is the very opposite – lacking ambition, urgency, passion and ideas. The time is long overdue for radical action to improve Scottish life – it doesn’t need to wait for independence.

Sandy Slater
Stirling

GERRY Hassan asks a key question: if Sir Keir Starmer can become PM, will he follow through with indyref2 pledge (or might we add “Vow2”)?

One must also be on one’s guard when Unionist Westminsterites make pledges! In the first case, it is the people of Scotland who will make that decision.

In an indyref2 undertaking, Starmer – whether PM or not (more likely not) – will be behind the Unionist fear campaign. He is no politically altruistic democrat. As members of the English duopoly party set-up, and the diminishing LibDems at Westminster, Labour are, as Hassan indicates, part of the British state. Labour buys into the fundamental structures, organisations and practices of the incorporating Union, aka Greater England. This state is the problem with its “sustaining power, privilege, inequality and corporate insider class”, to quote Hassan. One can add to this its overbearing sense of entitlement, unelected House of Lords and an unwritten, anarchic constitution.

Given the fact that English Labour cannot win outright without Labour MPs from Scotland, and they have currently one MP, the SNP would need to “support” it. Yet, even though Starmer is beating Johnson currently in English public opinion, it will not matter to the Tories. As Johnson is coming under pressure from factions in his party in view of his inadequacies, one must bear in mind that the Tory English mentality is that there will and “must always be an England” and that means a Tory England. The factions in Torydom hitting out at Johnson still support a power grab, breaking international treaties, and want to ditch Labour in England once and for all.

One way to guarantee that is for England to leave the Union, or as Johnson might say now, to renege on the Treaty of Union as it no longer guarantees Tory hegemony in England. That means that MPs from Scotland are no longer there to oppose Tories.

Simply ease Scotland and Wales out of the Union and problem solved. Labour will never overtake the Tories again. The few Tory, Labour and LibDem MPs from Scotland are expendable for the greater good of England, so long as it is Tory England.

Hassan states that “ the reconfiguration of the UK and end of the current British state will be messy and painful”. Actually, it will not. So long as England in Tory guise exists, the natural party of government in England will be relaxed. The Scottish peers of the realm will lose their allowances and free lunches for life. No-one up here will be bothered as unelected relics are a waste.

Scotland can go its own way. England can be left to sort its own problems as Global England and need not anguish over GERS.

No matter what these English MPs, Sir Keir or Sir Ed, say Scots directly and indirectly will determine their future. The falling share of the vote for Unionist parties, based in England, in Scotland is indicative of the end of the Union of 1707.

Starmer can “pledge” all he wants, but he would be better sorting out English problems in his homeland. His greater worry should be the Tories. After independence here, England will be stuck with them and the remnants of its other parties.

John Edgar
Kilmaurs

“THERE won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation,” is Donald Trump’s reply when questioned over the outcome of America’s presidential election. David Pratt highlights his comment in his excellent article (Sunday National, To autocracy and beyond). It leaves readers in no doubt of the global significance of the result.

Add a growing international debt to rising unemployment, racial tension, the lack of adequate healthcare and pressure from climate change events, then some very clear thinking is required on the part the next leader of “the free world”. Danger to the UK is proportional to an increasing dependence on our main ally. The standard ploy of any dictator when threatened with loss of power or unrest on the home front is to bring the public on side with a diversionary tactic. Leaving the EU may prove Westminster’s biggest folly so far. The repeat of a UK prime minister playing second in command to American political and financial interests is possible in today’s fast-developing picture. Iran, South China sea – Scotland should want no part in power-securing adventures. There is only one solution and timing is becoming critical.

Iain R Thomson Strathglass IT was heartening to see the SNP’s Westminster defence person’s rejection of the notion that a newly independent Scotland would be up for sale as someone else’s nuclear weapons depository.

As I outlined in some detail in the SNP CND paper “Nuclear Guantanamo on the Clyde: The plans to keep Trident on the Clyde in an independent Scotland”, it was only a matter of time before the analysts Stuart Crawford and Richard Marsh put forward in public what the MoD will be planning in secret – the inevitable Plan A to retain Great Britain’s collection of submarine-borne totem poles on the Clyde.

Stewart McDonald MP’s comments echo, not surprisingly, current SNP policy of the removal of all Royal Navy submarines on the Clyde that was passed unanimously at the SNP conference in 2018.

What new states do and, even more importantly, how they act on the international stage in their early years of independence shapes their international image.

Part of the vision proposed by the SNP from its inception is of a re-emerging Scottish state that is a reliable actor in matters of law, not only domestically but internationally, too.

Our First Minster has already publicly indicated to the United Nations through Bill Kidd MSP’s informal ambassadorship to that body, that if she has her way, one of the first acts of a newly independent Scotland would be to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

If an independent Scotland were to agree to the Vanguard Class boats remaining for anything more than three to five years, then that new state would be in breach of the treaty.

It’s worth noting that a number of SNP branches have already agreed the terms of a conference motion that will at one and the same time formally endorse and make SNP policy the First Minster’s declaration regarding the TPNW and also commit a future SNP administration of an independent Scotland to see Trident removed from the Clyde within three to five years of a Yes vote for Scottish independence.

Bill Ramsay Convenor, SNP CND I THINK it would be a bad move for any independent Scottish Government to agree a long-term deal to allow the remnants of the UK to keep using Faslane for their weapons of mass destruction (and any other bases) for a fee. We have just seen the current UK Tory Government pass a bill which undermines the rule of international law. How could we (or any other nation) trust the UK in any deal? These weapons – as well as the rotting hulks in Rosyth – have to go as soon as possible.

I don’t want Scotland to be used as a base for nuclear weapons, never mind those of another country. If the rest of the UK wants to keep them then they can take them and store them in their own land.

Cllr Kenny MacLaren
Paisley