SADLY, but as anticipated, the SNP conference has passed without the slightest indication that the party has even the barest notion of what the fatal flaw is that it has manufactured for itself, and which at the July election destroyed it as a functioning machine at Westminster by devastating its hold of the Scottish seats from more than 81% to less than 16% – a useless rump (and led by the very member who, along with Yousaf, had actually proposed the suicidal election platform).

That flaw is its complete failure to allow the people of Scotland to have a vote on independence, hopefully to overturn the 2014 No result. As any Scottish voter whose feet have not left the planet knows, London is not going to give permission for a second indyref, so the only way such a vote can occur is in a General Election turned (easily) into an independence plebiscite by the appropriate manifesto, essentially saying “Give us the majority of your votes, and we will restore to Scotland its sovereign independence”.

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So a very large number of that half of voters who want independence simply stayed at home, unwilling to bother voting for the SNP’s dud ticket. If the party had actually put out a proper plebiscitary manifesto the picture would have been very different, with a 50%-plus win or very near it, and with almost every Scottish seat in SNP hands. It would have brought the election alive.

With a majority of votes, the party would have been in a position to take Scotland out of the Union by the action of its MPs, in the very unlikely event that London even at that stage refused to come to the table. And there is nothing London could do about that, having already conceded that the Union is consensual (in every statement on the issue), that the choice is Scotland’s alone (in the Edinburgh Agreement), that the UK is not an indissoluble state (in the Northern Ireland Act 1998), and there being no legal or constitutional impediment. And who would contend for a moment that the country of England could not leave the Union?

Any attempt by the state to frustrate Scottish independence after the people of Scotland had legally voted for it would clearly besmirch a prime tenet of international law, the presumption of good faith, and would have London openly trying to oppress Scotland into subordination. Neither Edinburgh nor London could possibly take such a scenario seriously, and neither should the naysayers in the SNP hierarchy.

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A problem now is that, even if the SNP were to suddenly see the light and decide to make Holyrood 2026 a de facto referendum, storming success there would still leave them vastly short of the necessary majority of Scottish seats at Westminster to actually take the step (and thereby threaten London to the table). The hope would be that London would join negotiation of Scottish independence without awaiting a fateful next Westminster election.

But for the present, it appears that the party will approach Holyrood as it did Westminster – with another pre-arranged flop. And poor old Scotland will languish on the rack.

Alan Crocket
Motherwell

IN the SNP’s latest instance of “kicking the independence can down the road”, John Swinney is reported as having told the recent party conference that “he will work to make plain to voters independence is ‘urgent and essential’ to tackle the issues the country faces”. Yet the party appears still to cling to the policy of requiring to win a new referendum in order to secure independence.

Even the stray cats in the street know that even if the SNP could persuade every elector in Scotland to support independence, the Westminster government – in whose gift permission for a referendum lies – would never countenance another referendum on independence, especially after they nearly lost the one in 2014. When will it dawn on the SNP hierarchy that one day they will run out of road down which to keep kicking that can?

Peter Swain
Dunbar

I ATTENDED the Free Palestine demonstration outside the SNP conference, mentioned in your Monday article (Somerville: ‘Trust will have to be rebuilt with pro-Palestine campaigners’). Hitherto at these events it was common to hear derogatory chants about the likes of Keir Starmer, Michael Shanks and Ian Murray. Last weekend was the first time I heard theSNP targeted with the taunt “you can’t hide, you’re committing genocide”.

As an SNP supporter, I found this depressing but nonetheless wholly justified. Angus Robertson’s glad-handing of an Israeli diplomat, supposedly to explore areas of “mutual interest”, has met with richly deserved incredulity. How can it be that Scotland has mutual interests with a state that has been committing mass murder against a civilian population?

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It also transpires that, over the years, the Scottish Government has been donating millions of pounds of public money in grants to arms manufacturers like Edinburgh’s Leonardo UK (£786,125 in 2023), a firm which makes laser targeting systems for the F-35 jet aircraft that have been bombing Gaza’s women and children.

I wish, as a consequence, that Angus Robertson and the SNP old guard would pack their bags and go. There is enough young talent in the party’s ranks and among those pro-ceasefire MPs who recently lost their seats at Westminster to reinvigorate the leadership and to reset its moral compass. After all, none of them are either tainted by the Palestinian question or by any of the other fiascos that have troubled the SNP of late. It’s time to ring the changes.

Alastair McLeish
Edinburgh

HAVING always been regarded as Labour’s branch manager, it is now obvious that the post Anas Sarwar holds is office boy.

Bert MacNeill
via email