Scotland must avoid a repeat of post-Brexit borders shambles

They appear to have forgotten that the UK Government has devoted five years trying to regain full exclusive control over its land, sea and air borders.

The UK (English) government is obsessed with borders, internal and international, and as though that isn’t enough, is even provoking incidents with Russia off Crimea and now China in the Far East.

Dealing with the Covid pandemic has been dominated by the UK Government’s reluctance to place restrictions on our borders, in fact there is little doubt that this has been the cause of several outbreaks including the Delta variant.

Unfortunately Brexit has shown that the UK Government’s understanding of borders fell far short of its passion for controlling them; due to the government’s inability to negotiate and implement the essential legal frameworks on fishing, farming, banking, financial markets, immigration and even internal trade between the UK and Northern Ireland, the country is now literally in no man’s land.

The 27 countries in the EU plus those in the Schengen area have shown the world what can be done to free movement of people, goods and services while successive UK Governments remained semi-detached, squandering borrowed billions on its imagined position as one of the leading countries in the world because of its military capabilities.

An overwhelmingly majority of the people of Scotland understood the motivation behind Brexit and voted against leaving a coordinated, successful union for the isolation facing the UK.

The Scottish Government must place a very high priority on negotiating border agreements for an independent Scotland to ensure that ours do not become the combination of shambles and barriers that currently encircle the UK.

John Jamieson
South Queensferry

I FOUND Stephen Tingle’s letter in last Friday’s National interesting.

I very much agree that one should not interrupt one’s enemy while he is making a mistake. My view of the antics of Boris the Clown was that he was a dangerous “clown” who was working to his own agenda. I did take the view that he would manage to manoeuvre himself into a position where he was vulnerable to counter attack.

Now this is fine, if you are ready to spring the counter attack when the opportunity is provided to you.

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The Clown Boris has undermined our economy through forcing us out of the single market, he is working on dismantling our “devolved government” and our NHS, and he has made considerable progress. He has done this by misleading the public, mainly in England, and by using the Westminster system to enforce his will.

In the meantime, his laziness and incompetence has meant that he has used unprincipled people like Cummings, who is now attacking him, and he has been exposed as a liar to an extraordinary extent. This would have finished off most politicians but Johnson has two strong supports; (a) the UK media, and (b) Westminster etiquette which can be used to obscure his conduct.

Johnson now depends on this etiquette to a considerable extent, because this allows him to be able to ignore issues of embarrassment and keep things out of the press.

Now is the time for an SNP counter-attack. If they expose Westminster etiquette by calling Johnson out as a liar in the Commons they will be expelled, they can then insist that Johnson explain to the Commons for his lies before they will accept any further rulings from the Speaker.

This, if done by all the SNP MPs and pressed home, will cause a real problem for Johnson and the Speaker, who is in the hands of the Tories. It will throw light on Johnson’s lies, and the issues he lied about and it will attract international attention, especially in this time with the Glasgow international conference approaching. This means that the UK media will not be able to protect Johnson. So the SNP should strike now while the iron is hot.

Andy Anderson
Saltcoats

THE radical but reliable Sandy Coghill makes his point (Letters, Aug 4) based on a conversation with a stranger at a bus station, following the Holyrood election. Apparently this chap felt he couldn’t now vote SNP because of its EU view point and so voted Tory! Nobody seeking independence could possibly vote Tory because of Nicola Sturgeon’s stance on Europe.

Yes, of course, an independent Scotland would seek to reconnect with the largest open market in the world. However there are discussions within the SNP about whether it should be full EU membership or an associate arrangement like that of Switzerland or Norway. In terms of how Scotland views Europe and the world, there is a continuing divergence between Holyrood and Westminster on such issues as nuclear weapons, immigration, social deprivation, climate change and relationships with other nations. This certainly is no time for a re-think!

Grant Frazer
Newtonmore

THANKS to Peter A Bell and Jon Southerington for two cracking lines in Wednesday’s letters page. Peter’s “I suppose we must congratulate Piers Morgan on achieving mediocrity in the absence of any discernible talent” and Jon’s question which “ hangs in the air like a parentless fart” are classics. Great to have a laugh in the letters page.

Noirin Blackie
Haddington