I WAS disappointed by Carolyn Leckie’s article on Monday. I read Carolyn’s articles regularly and find them interesting normally, but I was not impressed with this one (Here’s a way to get Leave voters back into the fold, The National, April 2).

The assumption that those of us who voted to leave the EU can all be classified under one simple set of ideas is nonsense. Unlike Carolyn, I voted to leave, but that has not changed in any way my support for Scottish independence. There is no need to “get me back” into supporting Scottish independence, because I never left that campaign.

My opposition to the EU is that it is a neo-liberal political club, which I don’t want Scotland, when independent, to be a member of. I know that there are thousands of Scots like me who think the same.

We have nothing in common with the delusional right wing in the UK who want to “return” to the British Empire in world trade, such as the leading Brexiters. Their objectives are delusional and unobtainable so their campaign will collapse in disarray, which will tear the Unionist parties apart in internal friction.

People like myself know that Scotland needs to belong to a trading bloc in the world as it is today, so remaining in the customs union and the single market like Norway makes sense and I have no problem with that.

Carolyn does not recognise that there are people like me who voted to leave the EU, and I am sure that there are very many like me in Scotland.

Andy Anderson
Saltcoats

CAROLYN Leckie makes a very valid point when she suggests that the SNP, at some point in the near future, could bring back Leave voters by pledging that an independent Scotland would hold a three-option referendum (using the single transferable voting system) on Scotland’s relationship with the Europe: (a) rejoin the EU as a full member, (b) sign up to the single market via EFTA or (c) for Holyrood to take full control of the Scottish economy.

There has been so much said about the “EU factor” in the indy2 debate, much of which has been divisive. Carolyn’s suggestion would be a powerful way of re-uniting all the Yes voters and attracting others and I cannot think of an argument against it. We would maximise our chances of winning the next time round and, as an independent nation, the people Scotland would be able to choose which path they wished to take. You can’t get any simpler or more democratic than that.

And crucially, we know that, unlike any party in Westminster, Nicola and the SNP would keep to their promise.

Dennis White
Lanark

A SUPERB column from Carolyn Leckie in Easter Monday’s National. This may yet prove to be one of the most important ideas yet raised by a National columnist.

It certainly deserves to be read and discussed by every Yes supporter and every member of every pro-indy party.

The idea that we get all Yes voters and potential Yes voters back onto the same bus, and cut the Gordian knot of independence and Brexit, by promising Scots their own democratic referendum on our own relationship with the EU or EFTA once independence is achieved is, of course, not a new one. It’s a strategic solution that I and others have been calling for since the immediate aftermath of the 2016 Brexit result – including in these pages.

However, it’s the first time (as far as I’m aware) that a regular National columnist has explicitly called for such a position. That’s to be welcomed, and Carolyn Leckie deserves credit for that. I hope others will follow, and that the SNP and Scottish Government will give real consideration to such a proposal, because the promise of the three-way referendum on EU matters after indy is the best way of getting indy in the first place. If it can unite Carolyn, a Remain voter, and someone like myself, a Leave voter, then it can unite Leave and Remain voters across Scotland under the one banner.

It can clear the way to a second indyref focused on the broad general case for independence.

It addresses the democratic deficit and allows Scots to make up their own minds on the positions and arguments then pertaining – without the xenophobic and Little Englander fog of the 2016 EU referendum.

And if – above all – independence is about choice, and who makes those choices for Scotland, the idea of our own democratic referendum post-independence (to let the people choose from the options of EU membership, EFTA membership or neither), is one that certainly ticks that box.

Steve Arnott
Inverness

WHEN listening to the lunchtime BBC News yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to hear Sally McNair announce during a brief preview that Reporting Scotland would begin at “one thirty”, as I have complained in the past to the BBC that its published scheduling does not match what occurs in practice.

Regrettably I was again disappointed when my TV clock advanced to 13:33 and Reporting Scotland had still not commenced, and was further disappointed when the programme came to an end barely nine minutes later instead of 15 minutes as scheduled (13:30-13:45).

In other words, while the “British News” – primarily English news stories such as shootings in London and cancer treatment in the English NHS (interestingly not a negative story as we are accustomed to hearing almost daily from Reporting Scotland regarding the Scottish NHS, in spite of the latter’s generally higher level of performance) – consistently lasts three minutes (ten per cent) longer than advertised, the “Scottish News” regularly ends after eight or nine minutes, with up to 50 per cent of the scheduled broadcast time “lost”.

How can the BBC be respected for professional integrity, never mind counter increasing claims of political bias, when it cannot even be trusted to honestly publish and announce accurate times for its core news programmes?

Stan Grodynski
Longniddry, East Lothian