DOESN’T Keith Brown ruling out dissolving the Holyrood Parliament smack of vested interest cowardice rather than the campaigning zeal we’re entitled to expect from our de facto leaders of the drive for independence (The National, November 28)?

You don’t need a two-thirds vote to dissolve Holyrood. Unprecedented, perhaps, but if all those MSPs supporting independence resigned, there would have to be a vote. Whether that is by-elections or the full Parliament, it would become unworkable, and a huge embarrassment to the UK’s anti-democracy stance.

If MPs were simultaneously pulled out of Westminster, resigned and sought re-election we’d have a constitutional crisis which could even bring this appalling UK Government down.

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Brown and his ilk are bottling it. He’s clearly putting his comfortable and personal power interests ahead of the independence cause and the interests of the people of Scotland. We need action, and the SNP are refusing to lead it. Their leaders’ campaigning zeal seemingly no longer stretches to actually campaigning. They talk a good game, but that’s all it is – talk.

We don’t need kicking-the-can-down-the-road spring conferences to decide the next step. Did Gandhi engage in such talking shops rather than the relentless direct action that won India’s independence?

MSPs and MPs should be joining together to create the constitutional crisis that would make the English-dominated Westminster sit up and take notice. In case anyone missed it, on Laura Kuenssberg’s biased BBC programme, the Supreme Court judgment and its impact on demolishing any concept of UK democracy didn’t even rate a mention.

When are the SNP going to take the action necessary to elevate this democratic disgrace to the front pages and the importance it deserves?

What will it take to prise those like Brown off their comfy Holyrood benches to actually earn their pay and repay voters’ trust in them by demonstrating they represent their electorate.

Incidentally, there is nothing to prevent us from asking for a Section 30 order and telling Sunak what we intend to do before we do it because there is nothing politically he could do to prevent it other than fascist intervention which would trash the UK as just another banana republic in the eyes of the international community.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, we ask for a Section 30 order. When refused MPs leave the House, they resign and seek re-election. Simultaneously, MSPs supporting independence do likewise. This foments the constitutional crisis that puts the issue on the front pages.

And if this doesn’t work? Then we do the same again, unless and until democracy prevails and Scots have the opportunity to vote to be rid of this appalling Union once and for all.

Jim Taylor

Edinburgh

It seems almost pointless for the SNP to hold a special conference sometime in the New Year when their depute leader Keith Brown MSP has already firmly ruled out the option of holding an early Scottish Parliament election (The National, November 28).

The only other option left on the table will be to try to win the majority of votes in the next UK General Election. In the event of that coming to pass, it seems we would most likely be in the political Groundhog Day position of again begging the latest UK Prime Minister for a Section 30 order. Good luck with that, Keith.

I would be very interested to hear from him how the absence of a First Minister in Bute House for a month or two would, as he suggests, adversely influences the cost of living crisis. It would appear she has been unable to influence the cost of gas, electricity, petrol, diesel, mortgages, food etc. to date.

Perhaps The National could allocate Keith Brown some column inches to explain this novel economic theory?

Brian Lawson

Paisley

Brian Lawson’s letter in Monday’s paper struck a chord that seemed familiar to me, what was all that campaigning for the SNP about?

I thought it was for independence, it now seems that I was wrong. From the comments of Mhairi Hunter and others recently, the aim was for a referendum. How mistaken I was! I’d paid my dues all those years under a misapprehension.

It seems that the SNP’s purpose is now the “neverendum”, and independence must remain a distant dream. Better to travel hopefully than to arrive is now the game. Any excuse to avoid progressing independence will do.

Send MPs to Westminster to express indignation and suffer abuse appears to be the limit of the current leadership’s ambition. Speak nicely and you might get a referendum in the distant future but not any time soon.

Others have already questioned the point of Scottish MPs (plus Welsh and Northern Irish) attending the so-called “mother of parliaments”, so why do it?

For most of the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth, the Irish returned Home Rule candidates, only to be disrespected by Westminster. The Irish electorate got fed up eventually and elected MPs who didn’t stand for such treatment.

Why do our MPs still put up with it? How long will they continue to do so? Why show respect for a place that shows none for you?

When I joined the SNP, policy was that a majority of seats in Scotland was a mandate to negotiate independence. Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister seems to have confirmed that a few years ago. So why are we still where we are?

No more bland platitudes, please. Action is required and soon. But I won’t hold my breath.

Drew Reid

Falkirk