NOW is the time for all four Scottish political parties to include as part of their day job a joint strategy in pursuit of the best possible Brexit outcome for Scotland. I am fairly certain that despite any differences, a desire to do what is best for Scotland is something they all share.

As a first and immediate action they could send in the tank commander (Ruth Davidson). Her platoon is already in place and they could lose Mrs May her slender majority and in one fell swoop annihilate any DUP agreement, thus also protecting the LGBT status quo.

And, let us not forget, the UK Government now includes the perpetrators of the NHS £350 million lie. If they could lie then, who knows what they are capable of when the stakes are higher? They may even agree to temporarily withdraw the daggers from each other’s back.

Of course, we should not let them off the hook by accepting that it was a lie to be laughed off. We should hold them to it.

If they are allowed a free hand on Brexit and make a mess of it, they can all follow Gisela Stuart’s example and flee the scene. Who would handle the mess then?
Robert Johnston
Airdrie

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Bickering and SNP-bashing will get us nowhere

IT’S finally happened, the face-to-face talks between a weakened Tory government and the EU that mean we’re actually on the exiting Brexit path. Such a convenient smoke screen! Where are the details of that “deal” with the DUP? We were promised them but none are forthcoming.

So does the Dear Queen now act a postwoman for the Tory Party, delivering a speech written for her, as custom, but now telling her subjects what her government couldn’t, wouldn’t, and by tomorrow probably wont? I wonder how she feels having been told by the same government that her speech next year has been cancelled so as to extended this to a two-year Parliament?

And in the meantime, we hear of a yet another failed Tory, who resigned from the European Parliament, failed to get elected to the UK Parliament, and is rewarded for public rejection by Lordship and elevated to a post in the Scotland Office. Democracy, they’re taking you for a ride!

And our response? More in-fighting, political and grassroots; more derision of the main political vehicle for independence, the SNP, with their internal debates spilling over into public with that being seen as division, not required discussion. The grassroots isn’t much better off at the moment with what appears to be jockeying for pre-eminent position, and a general slagging off of all and sundry by one and all in “opposing camps”.

All the while, the political day job is going to get more difficult on the UK national stage. The next big thing to hit the Scottish Government is bound to be the unrolling of Great Repeal Bill as we see Westminster smash and grab the returning of powers from the EU. In an effort to appear resolute whilst implementing Brexit, a weak and wobbly Tory government will ensure that sovereignty is seen to reside nowhere other than Westminster.

What then for (at minimum) the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy? We can expect them firstly to be diminished as part of bargaining tools and then wheeked into Westminster with nothing or very little coming directly to Holyrood. UK Governments have the 2016 Scotland Act to fall back on which clearly establishes that power-sovereignty resides in Westminster. It’s all very well saying we have the Sewel Convention. But when all any UK Government wants is to placate the majority of voters outwith Scotland and see sovereignty removed from the EU and returned to London, how secure is that? The Great Repeal Bill begins to ask even more clearly: what then for devolution as is, and yet another fake option we’re now being sold: more powers allegedly coming to Holyrood? This sits opposite the reality of what is the will of the people as noted and acted on by the Scottish Parliament: a second indyref leading to independence. It is coming yet for a’ that. But without less internal bickering, without visible demonstration of our determination to gain our independence, without debate, without taking the argument to press, media, church halls, community centres, stalls and playgrounds, we won’t recapture those we lost in the General Election, we won’t know the vision that is an independent Scotland that people across the spectrum want.
Selma Rahman
Edinburgh

GEORGE Kerevan wrote: “Now is the time for an absolutely clear vision of just what Brexit means” (The National, June 19) but I don’t know why he wrote that!

Brexit is a negotiation, it is clear that the Government have not got “a clear idea”! We will not know “what it means” for at least a year! Perhaps longer. The statement George should be making is: Now is the time for an absolutely clear vision of just what Scottish independence means!

We don’t have that yet. The emotional desire is strong but it’s not enough. Though I don’t like it, I have to agree with Michael Fry when he says: “We must be able to convince Scots that they will be richer after independence, that’s how we’ll win.” (The National 20th June 20).

With £1 billion a day flowing into the Scottish national bank, the opportunity for repairing the Scottish infrastructure seriously damaged by countless years of red and blue Tory neglect, would revitalise Scotland and its people and would provide full employment for years to come.

There isn’t room to list the matters which could be attended to but there is a stark warning! People like Alan Sutherland (Letters, June 20) would delay our decision for at least four years! That means £1.8 trillion bypassing Scotland and furnishing the homes and palaces in another land. With that sort of money coming into Scotland the EU will be courting us, and we can pick and choose what we do, all in good time.
Christopher Bruce
Taynuilt

I AM deeply concerned with those who want to put the referendum back. They seem to lack any form of observational understanding.

What they are suggesting is that we give our enemy more time to continue with its continuous, carefully and savagely crafted media destruction of the record of the SNP in government, which has already paid it huge dividend, go to the next Scottish election, beat the SNP at it and remove the independence majority in our Parliament and then say there is no mandate for a referendum.

I can just imagine Edward II at Bannockburn shouting to Robert the Bruce: “Hang on, Robert. Can you wait till we’re ready?”

The enemy doesn’t want another referendum. That exactly means we do. As soon as possible. That is what the SNP’s 125,000 members are waiting for.
Dave McEwan Hill
Sandbank, Argyll