SCOTLAND has an election victory to obtain in 2026.

Yes Scotland has to win a major election in 2026 and that victory campaign has to start now.

No distractions, no periods of angst, regret or introspection on events elsewhere. For the 2026 election will utterly and profoundly determine the entire future of our country and its desire for independence.

Lots of near-paranoid talk of existing political geological plates shifting must provide all of us who read this important paper with the determination to focus fundamentally on our future.

In practical terms the mass party of independence, the SNP, must be galvanised to increase, no, double their membership in one year. Easy, each one must find one.

Secondly, candidates must be in place by May 2025. There are powerful former MPs available to be recruited now.

The campaign must be built around the word independence, echoing the eager, urgent spirit of 2014. In this regard the SNP need to change straplines to include that key word.

Now it must be Stronger for an Independent Scotland. Delivering for an Independent Scotland.

For 2026 is the last-chance saloon writ large: a destiny that must not be denied.

Channel any political frustrations gathered up recently and use that energy to commit us all to a victory for Scotland in 2026.

Thom Cross

Carluke

APART from the real problems of constructing his suggested course, which he brushes aside, Andy Anderson (Letters, Nov 4) is still silent on how the measure it is designed to bring about – another vote on independence, but set up by Holyrood without London input – is meant to take us forward.

Suppose the plan was perfect; suppose Holyrood enacted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, defeated any judicial assault and held an indyref in spite of the Scotland Act reservations, the Supreme Court decision, and the absence of a Section 30 order from London; and suppose Yes won by a majority of votes. What then?

How does Scotland actually leave the Union following such an event when, 10 years after its people voted against independence, this very year, they used the UK General Election to put Unionist bums on more than 84% of the Scottish seats at Westminster (albeit mainly because the SNP did not present them with something worth voting for, a true independence proposition)?

In Mr Anderson’s scenario, what person or body pronounces the fiat to declare independence?

What authority do they have to do so, and how are they endowed with it? How do you put the actual transition to independence through in a way which will carry, among our own people, and among all the high officers, executive and staff of government departments and agencies central and local – including police, judicial, defence, treasury and the whole bureaucracy and apparatus needed for a modern, sovereign Scottish state – irrespective of whether as individuals they voted Yes or No?

Let me suggest that the only thing which will in fact carry is an independence which has come about via a democratic victory in a plebiscitary General Election, putting into office our mandated supreme representatives with the power which only they can hold, to take Scotland out of the Union even without London’s cooperation. If there exists any legal or constitutional barrier to that course, identify it.

So I say again, the straight road rather than the crooked. I will leave the last word to Mr Anderson.

Brian Boyce

Motherwell

LIKE many others, as a state pensioner with no other source of income, I’m filled with dread at the very prospect of paying more for my diminished use of council services I simply can’t afford.

I resent that this tax is based not on income but some spurious notion of property value, effectively a bedroom tax from which there is no relief for homeowners like us.

I know some with two work pensions, a new car every thee years and regular cruise holidays paying less than we are because their house falls into one band lower.

The plain fact is that we just can’t afford our bloated council structure, and our politicians are failing us by refusing to address this.

The taxpayers’ problem is that our elected representatives are inured in it. They don’t see the problems with the empires they’ve stoked. They’re invested in the gravy train.

Technology could save us fortunes that could be better invested in services by amalgamation of administrative functions.

One common licensing system. One HR. One payroll. One social work department. One education. One legal department. Most could be devolved to the regions where operational costs could be lower – more savings.

One drastically simplified and reformed Cosla pulling it together.

Local function depots and offices. Local small planning units inputting local concerns.

And huge administration savings, particularly at executive levels.

There are cities with three times the population that don’t have the expensive bloated structure we have.

We need a structure for the 21st century we can afford, not our relic of the 18th century predicated on local political empires and privilege that the electorate continually show by appallingly low turnouts that they’re not interested in, all the while complaining about the waste, inefficiency and undue influence by pressure groups in areas accorded false priority which we really can’t afford.

We urgently need reform. And a government prepared to do it in our interests.

Jim Taylor

Scotland