I READ the website comments relating to Labour in Monday’s paper with great interest, followed by a letter on the next page from G Mckenzie in relation to Alex Salmond, all confirming what I had been reading over the weekend as featured in much of the Unionist media. I do find it informative to read up on the opposition!

One aspect of their anti-indy tactics being touted is to hark back to mythical halcyon days with Labour in charge of Scotland.

The media knows, deep down, just how toxic the Tories are here. Promoting them or any alleged social economic advantage emanating from Westminster, no matter how spurious, is a lost cause. They understand that to maintain Unionism, even if that means us being in hock to a parliament we don’t vote for, there is the need to glorify the good old days, with the good old Labour boys running the show.

With the backing they have, media will force-feed a narrative that ignores the benefits derived from devolution and our Holyrood parliament.They will pedal the need to turn the clock back before Scotland can go forward with Labour. It’s SNPBAAD on steroids.

Another part of their tactics will undoubtedly be a return to the tried and tested: divide and rule as exemplified by the Sunday Mail and its interview with Alex Salmond. Other papers delivered what they believed was an insight into a lack of succession planning regarding Nicola Sturgeon and her desire to “move on”. Not content with that, there was a run-through of the possible FM candidates, complete with their frailties, faults and obviously no “strengths”.

There’s also a theme emerging in the belief of some natural demise of the SNP majority in the forthcoming local elections. A dubious theory that if one party is in power for too long the voter then hankers after change, any change.

What a picture it paints: a struggling Scotland, a stagnating Scotland held back by the SNP who’ve hijacked (good) devolution with the redundant call for (bad) independence. You can see the circularity of their argument. To go forward, to recover from our deviating from the benefits of the Union, Scotland needs to go back to our natural home: Labour! Really?

It’s very naive of me to even try to formulate a fundamental question, but here goes: can’t the pro-indy parties, their politicians and personalities create a non-hostile atmosphere? One that focuses on the task at hand. One that doesn’t score own goals. One that doesn’t reek

of in-fighting. Too simple, too naive? Probably, but I cannot be alone in not knowing which party, which “leader”, whose manifestos will get my vote in an indy Scotland. And really, if that is your current focus, are you truly focussed on the fight at hand, securing the required majority who believe that independence is the way forward?

Selma Rahman
Edinburgh

THE belief that Alba and the SNP could ever work together is at best a triumph of optimism over reality. There is nothing in it for the SNP. There is no political advantage to bring on board a tiny party with a leader who is even less popular than Boris Johnson. A party that often accuse SNP supporters of being a personality cult around Nicola Sturgeon while being oblivious to the obvious shortcomings of their own leader.

Many Alba members still seem to cling to the belief that the SNP hierarchy, the Scottish civil service and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service conspired to try to have Alex Salmond jailed and that the Scottish judiciary are part of a further conspiracy against him and some of his supporters. This is a theory that even such staunch supporters of independence, Murdo Fraser, Alex Cole-Hamilton and Jackie Baillie would not support. Alba under its current leadership is more of a liability than an asset so why would anyone think the SNP should work with them?

Alan Thompson
via thenational.scot