Westminster elections are the affair of a foreign country

But Neale Hanvey in his column on Monday reminded us that on the day the Edinburgh Agreement was signed, support for independence was below 30% and it ended up a close-run race.

This could mean a very solid majority if there is another referendum. Which, of course, is why it is being so strongly resisted but this also shows the folly of allowing the Unionists to refuse independence on the basis of opinion polls.

We must firmly hold that a further mandate will go along with a Scottish election result which is won by an independence-supporting government at Holyrood. This should be made siccar by the SNP/Greens/Alba/SSP co-operation. This should be the only poll that counts.

The Westminster elections are null and void as being the affairs of another and foreign country. Until we start to think in these terms we shall never be independent.

Iain WD Forde

Scotlandwell

IN his column on Monday, Neale Hanvey MP stated that Alex Salmond “would have had us independent by now”. In support of his assertion, Hanvey provided a potted history of the various stages which led towards the 2014 referendum and Salmond’s role in achieving it.

While I would be the first to agree that Salmond played an absolute blinder during that time, I do not accept Hanvey’s belief that the same situation would now prevail if Salmond was still at the helm.

Salmond was the architect of the referendum strategy but it is my opinion that in the absence of a clear constitutional condition about the granting of a referendum, it was a strategy which would only be permitted to work on one occasion by the powers at Westminster.

Hanvey pointed out that “on the day the Edinburgh Agreement was signed, support for independence was below 30%. It has long been my belief that the reason why David Cameron granted a Section 30 order was precisely because the support for independence at the time was so low.

Cameron thought there was no danger of a Yes vote and that it would be a skoosh case against independence.

History tells us that it was anything but that and the Westminster establishment was given a massive fright. Westminster will never again grant us a referendum where they think there is a chance of a Yes victory.

That is why I hold the opinion that referendum strategy is now dead in the water I noted that Hanvey considers that his “Scottish Sovereignty Bill which would repatriate referendum rights to the Scottish Parliament” would resolve this problem.

If he genuinely does think that there is a chance of the Westminster Parliament voting through his bill then he may wish to visit his local bookmaker in Fife and ask what the odds of this happening are. He might find that those against the chance East Fife playing Cowdenbeath in next year’s Scottish Cup Final would be lower.

Salmond was a great leader of the SNP and I dearly want to see a rapprochement between the SNP and our old colleagues who joined Alba but there needs to be a recognition across the board that there is no magic bullet available to take Scotland to independence. The independence movement needs to combine its forces, agree a feasible coherent strategy and work towards it. It will not be straightforward and, regardless of what the critics of the SNP may think, patience will be required.

Jim Finlayson

Banchory

NICK Cole of Meigle should be thanked for his interest and contribution to the Alex Salmond debate but his dismissal of Salmond’s abilities as “rose-tinted glasses” is short sighted.

Salmond is a true Scottish patriot and firm believer in the cause of Scottish independence, every bit as much as great guardians of Scotland’s past. Such figures are frequently polarising and so I do not begrudge Mr Meigle his opinion.

What I would say is this, we returned 70 years’ worth of useless Labour lumps of wood to Westminster for absolutely zero result and Yousaf stinks of the same rot. He seems to be a slick, career-minded yes man who will roll over at the slightest pressure and does not have the ability to lead the nation to independence. The meek handing over of the Stone of Destiny for the coronation is a case in point. No way would Alex have failed to garner some profit from such an act.

It is high time Holyrood started making waves. Yousaf and his followers would never dream of doing so.

Rory Bulloch

Shawlands

PATRICK Harvie is holding Scots to ransom when he says that in order to work with Alba the Greens would “need to have some shared ground on social values” (Greens rule out independence talks with Alba, June 19).

There can be no doubt that the Scottish independence cause is best served by having the widest collective all singing in unison from the same song sheet yet Harvie and his Green Party cohorts would sacrifice that important benefit to advance their social re-engineering agenda, eschewed by the overwhelming majority and which has stirred up considerable antipathy among women struggling once again to protect women’s rights against attack from minority interests.

How serious are these Greens about the fundamental democratic rights of Scotland or are they using indy to piggy-back their way into a position within government to advance their social agenda?

Surely the message for the electorate is to vote only for those parties for whom indy is the priority, who recognise that only when that is regained can we begin to address the kind of Scotland we want to shape and reject it being reduced to a Greens’ bargaining tool?

Jim Taylor

Edinburgh