Alyn Smith and colleagues were not elected to fix the UK

The situation is dangerous, he says, “given we’re dealing with a UK Government so dysfunctional they are obviously more interested in briefing against each other than informing the public.”

Yes, the Tories have a bigger majority and an even more self-serving Cabinet than they did pre-December, but how is this fundamentally different from the past three years? And why haven’t the SNP developed a strategy to deal with this and use it to our advantage?

READ MORE: Alyn Smith: Dysfunctional UK Government must act to deal with crisis

Could the answer be that Alyn, and many other SNP MPs, have forgotten why they were elected in the first place? I’ll give you a clue Alyn, it wasn’t to fix the UK!

Even Gaby Hinsliff in Wednesday’s Guardian seems to understand the implications of devolution rather better than Alyn Smith. Half the point of devolution, she says, was to acknowledge that what works for one part of the Union doesn’t always work everywhere – “you can’t devolve education and health policy and then expect devolved governments not to use their powers in a once-in-a-generation emergency”.

She also points out that a bolder approach from devolved leaders may, in fact, achieve more in changing UK Government policy than having Westminster MPs asking questions and highlighting that the system isn’t working. Because, as she says, “it’s one thing brushing off questions about why Britain isn’t doing what South Korea is doing, it’s quite another explaining why Scotland appears to have no confidence in your strategy”.

However, despite Alyn’s comments on the superiority of the Scottish Government’s daily briefings, the truth is that, until now, Nicola Sturgeon and her advisers have gone along with Westminster’s approach rather than the WHO recommendations. Fortunately, there are now welcome signs that the SNP government is, at last, beginning to grow a backbone and is seriously considering breaking ranks with Westminster.

This is something that can only be good for the SNP. To quote Gaby Hinsliff again: “It does the Scottish nationalist cause in particular no harm for Sturgeon to emerge looking like a plausible alternative to Westminster leadership in a crisis”.

But why does it take a metro-centric journalist to point out what Alyn appears to be missing? There is currently a power vacuum at Westminster and even when Boris Johnson returns as PM, the UK Government will still be led by a demonstrably incompetent part-timer.

This is the ideal opportunity to push at the boundaries of the devolution settlement and to normalise the idea that Scotland can, and should, do things differently. To back off from this on the basis that we shouldn’t politicise the coronavirus crisis simply gives an incompetent Tory administration a free pass. The coronavirus crisis itself is political and its very severity is due to political incompetence and posturing.

Perhaps it’s time for Alyn Smith and his colleagues to realise that their voters don’t want them to help rescue or rebuild the British state – we want them to take practical actions to demonstrate that Scotland can do better by itself.

Gordon Millar
London

THANK you for Hamish MacPherson’s article about Wendy Wood (Wendy Wood: A Scottish Patriot to her core, April 21). But the article did not mention the reason for her third imprisonment.

As I remember it, she had noticed “a wee woman” in a Glasgow cafe weeping over a cup of tea. She joined her to ask what the matter was and she told her that her daughter was in prison. The girl could not sleep at nights, the prison was so cold and damp that the walls of her cell were wet; and though she might have kept her clothes on at night this was not allowed as the regulation was that clothes had to be put outside the door overnight. Wendy decided to investigate.

READ MORE: Crowds would gather in Edinburgh to hear the great Wendy Wood

The quickest way she could get to prison was to absolutely refuse to pay her tax. Though her local policeman was unwilling to arrest her, in the end he was obliged to carry out the arrest, and as she still refused to pay, she was imprisoned. There, as she discovered, all was exactly as had been described to her. Having completed her sentence she was released, and started at once to campaign for the improvement in the living conditions for Scottish women prisoners.

Though some nationalists of the day considered Wendy an embarrassment, she was in fact a valiant woman.

Lesley Findlay
Fort Augustus

THE “wartime spirit” had already been invoked by the Home Office in its treatment of foreign nationals. Its behaviour towards them has for some years been reminiscent of refugees from Europe in the Second World war. “Undesirable aliens” was their lot, and the same attitude prevailed in the armed forces where foreign training was disregarded. It’s time for TV to show The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp – that would show true spirit of the time!

Drew Reid
Falkirk

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