SO that’s it then, Scotland. You’ll have had your democracy. The wannabe PM is demanding you bend the knee. If you waste your vote on these “protesters”, don’t expect him to listen. Send 56 MPs from independence-supporting parties to Westminster and he won’t care. His answer is NO! That’s us telt!

Now I admit I have a visceral dislike of Starmer. Perhaps it’s the constant lying and denials. Is it his lack of decency and humanity over Gaza? His apparent bullying of Hoyle (weak as he is) over Westminster protocol so the SNP couldn’t shame him? His ego couldn’t take it.

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Perhaps too it’s his purge of dissenters in his party or his false promises to gain the leadership in the first place. It could be his authoritarian arrogance and entitlement even when he’s just not that good, as many, many, many interviews have confirmed. There are just so many reasons why he is so deeply unlikeable.

We are now at a stage in this election where Noddy’s hat could beat the Tories. Deeply unlikeable Starmer will win. Probably by record numbers, but he wants more. He doesn’t need Scotland. But he WANTS Scotland!

So are we going to roll over, vote Labour and disappear into the ether like we used to? Let’s not! Let’s send him a message, welcome or otherwise: Here’s your coat, Keir. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Love Scotland.

PS See you in court!

I Easton
via email

STARMER’S not even “President” yet and he’s already flatly refusing Scotland’s right to even ask itself what it wants. So what’s the alternative for Scotland if we can’t express a democratic preference through some sort of vote? Civil disobedience? Withhold taxes? Glue ourselves to the doors of the Scotland Office, blockade Westminster government buildings, storm the BBC? Occupy Edinburgh Castle? Are we left with no alternative?

Then what? We all know what happened in Ireland. Is that what Starmer really wants – some Scottish hotheads starting to blow things up? British Army on the streets of Dundee?

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Ireland now has a stronger economy than the UK. Kenya, India, USA etc overcame Brit repression, torture, war crimes, brutality and bribery, very often by bomb and bullet, but independence was always won eventually by negotiation, and none ever wanted back. Ever.

It’s time ordinary, decent Labour members took back control of their party from the corporate donors and flash boys with titles. Now that really would make a Change.

Before it’s too late.

Alan Laird
Stirling

WHEN Starmer refuses Scots’ seventh request for a Section 30, the SNP policy is to “apply political pressure”. What “political pressure” has the party put Westminster under in the last decade of mandates?

Starmer has stated “no Section 30”, so surely the SNP must change its policy. Instead of asking for “permission” we should be giving Westminster one last chance to agree before we use the next Scottish election as an indy vote, and go ahead without their agreement.

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It’s time to stop acting like leaders of the “region” the Union made us, and start acting like leaders of the ancient proud country that we Scots are.

The SNP tried to stop the Brexit England voted for. Do they now want to “apply political pressure” for 300 years until Westminster sees things our way?

We should demand we are respected or future relations will be ruined and we’ll trade with the EU if the UK refuses to cooperate.

Westminster will try to force us into a Section 30 in the same week that our Westminster reps stop asking and start telling.

Billy Robertson
via email

IT should be obvious by now that the status of Scotland is of no consequence to the Westminster Parliament. Scotland is an independent country in a treaty relationship with another independent country, England, the nature of which has been corrupted over three centuries by a sovereign “British” Parliament.

Although the basis for Union was flawed in the first place and was never a democratic act, the Treaty has been further usurped and undermined by regular acts of parliament that deny any thought of a “Union of Equals”. Given Keir Starmer’s flat “No” to indyref talks, it is evident that the relationship between the two parties is not up for negotiation and the only way to remedy the situation is to declare our status as an independent state under UN rules and using our own resources start to build our country up.

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The state of Estonia did this in the 1990s with Russian troops still garrisoned on their land. They had the courage and the determination to shake off the rule of a far more powerful entity that England. The choice is ours: look Starmer straight in the eye and tell him that negotiation will begin or the flow of resource into England will stop forthwith, OR allow the Westminster government to continue to plunder and deny us use of our own resources.

We are never going to be “given independence” by Westminster. We will have to assert our right, and claim it in the name of the Scottish people.

David Neilson
Dumfries

I THOUGHT that John Swinney came across really well on Question Time last week – and was by far the most statesman-like. My only disappointment was that, noting the programme was coming from York, John did not quote the good old Yorkshire phrase “you don’t get owt for nowt!”

Ian Lawson
Milngavie