CONGRATULATIONS to the SNP government for rejecting the latest attempt by the UK Government to destroy the devolution settlement.

Let us be in no doubts about what is happening here.

The whole point of Brexit is to allow Westminster to again take control over all aspects of power within the UK. Devolution is completely alien to that desire.

If it were not for the fact that Theresa May made such a hash of calling a General Election and losing her majority then we would already be much further down the road in the attempt to destroy devolution.

The proposed seven-year “sunset clause” on Clause 11 is a Trojan horse whose aim is to, as the BBC likes to phrase it, “kick the can down the road” on a difficult decision. Once seven years of this “sunset clause” had elapsed there is no doubt that Westminster would review Clause 11, state that the its arrangements were working perfectly well and thereafter retain it and expand it to other areas. There would be no sunset on the sunset clause.

Once that was achieved the devolution settlement would be effectively destroyed and there would be then be nothing to stop Westminster grabbing further powers from the Scottish Parliament to ensure “continuity” throughout the UK. What then for the Scottish Parliament?

Never forget that all shades of party in Westminster like to play the long game to achieve their ends. It is the most sincere hope of rabid Brexiteers to turn the clock back and centralise all power in Westminster. The Scottish Parliament stands in the way of that hope and protects Scotland’s interests.

Seven years may seem like a reasonable time to some whereby Westminster can “retain” some powers, but at the end of that seven years who will be left to protect us?

Colin Waddell
Address supplied

I WAS astonished to hear on Radio Scotland this morning that The National had greeted the arrival of the newborn prince with “What the Hell?”.

This greeting was not only rude, but wrong. Or has the sexual revolution come so far that we are now supposed to hate babies?

I belong to a family which has for 80 years consistently worked, and worked very hard, both within and without the SNP to establish a just and independent parliament for Scotland. But I have been sometimes disconcerted by the clamour of The National’s young journalists for the so-called saving grace of a republic, or a president instead of our present monarchy. This shows a lamentable ignorance of contemporary and 20th-century history.

Today there are in the world a remarkable number of ghastly republics, despotic though elected governments, corrupt dictators and not a few presidents who may have reached their positions by wading through blood. This, of course you will say, could never happen in Scotland. Oh yeah? As the old folk used to say, “there’s good and bad in every clan.”

There is much to be said for the consistency of a constitutional monarchy. England in the past had given too much say to the monarch, therefore Charles I could overrule parliament, and so in the end they judiciously but mercilessly executed him. In Scotland, true to form, it was traditional to allow the king to vote in parliament, but he had, like everyone else there, only one vote.

So, what is the position of the monarchy in Scotland today? The Queen and her family have benign influence but no political power. They stand in for the concept of a whole country and its whole people, and its whole parliaments, as in the cases of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and we hope one day of Scotland and Wales. What is wrong with that?

What is undoubted is that she, the present Queen, is descended, through however many ancestors, from James VI and Mary Queen of Scots, and therefore from the Scottish Royal house of Stewart.

Lesley J Findlay
Fort Augustus

I AM very interested in the fact that the UK Government is going to “give residency to the Windrush Generation”. It would seem to me that they never “lost” their residency in the first place. Commonwealth citizens who arrived before the 1973 act were given a National Insurance number and a National Health registration and then lived their lives just like the rest of us who happened to be born here.

These people came with their children (who now fall under the appalling “Hostile Environment” the Home Office now works under), and have a lifetime’s record of contribution to our society in tax and NI contributions from which many now draw a pension. They have never lost the rights they had, and why a prominent QC or equivalent does not say this out loud and clear I cannot understand.

We cannot let a bunch of privileged politicians deny the rights of our friends and neighbours. If I had to prove my rights under the current regime I would struggle to prove my birth-right, so how we can put these folk through this ordeal and sleep is a mystery.

David Neilson
Dumfries

I READ the letters yesterday and was absolutely flabbergasted by the offering from Ian O Bayne. The admission that nearly four years later we “still have to carry out an in-depth analysis of why we lost last time” beggars belief. What has been going on since 2014, and if this analysis has not been done why was the FM talking up the possibility of another referendum in the aftermath of the Brexit vote?

R Wilson
Stevenston

I ABSOLUTELY agree with Mr Bayne about Labour for Independence. They were indispensable in 2014, and although I am no fan of Labour or the Tories, or for that matter the LibDems, we have to acknowledge the contributions to the good fight of those who want independence. They may not share our political outlook on a daily basis, but those who had the courage to stand up against their own parties’ dominant philosophy in relation to independence have to be valued.

Lorna Campbell
via thenational.scot