The Scottish phoenix is awaiting its chance to rise from Tory horror

Aye, but the Third Craw is alive and well. It flourishes in the knowledge that these Conservative Party political broadcasts by the mass media have exhibited to the entire electorate of the United Kingdom, at a time of great constitutional crisis, that the party which has brought us to this crisis is incapable of producing anything other than dross from its serried, loud-mouthed ranks.

That viewers should be served with hours of mouthings directed solely at the very few people entitled to vote is insulting and demonstrates the imbalance in broadcasting provision. The choice this self-serving electorate have to make is between a former foreign secretary whose major achievement is the continued incarceration of an innocent woman in Iran, and a former health secretary whose name is mispronounced by every health worker in England. Without any say from any of the rest of us, a tiny fraction of the UK electorate will select who is to govern us.

The Third Craw (which is in fact a phoenix) has been consistently ignored but awaits the chance to recover her rightful wealth, decency and international respect from the wretched bones of the xenophobes who have brought this calamity upon us all. I weep for my friends and kin in England who lack such a simple escape. It will not be long before Scots are given the opportunity to determine their own future.
KM Campbell
Doune

SO far Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign has consisted of a series of meandering and incoherent presentations, riddled with lies, exaggerations and vicious slanders.

Ian Blackford’s point that Johnson is a racist is self-evident. Johnson has made his pitch for the Tory leadership out of the calculated and deliberate scapegoating of Muslims for the economic problems the Tories and the bankers have caused. In this respect Johnson is not any different from Hitler.

Institutional racism is not unique to this offensive ignoramus. The Tory Party has a long history of whipping up racism in a divide-and-conquer strategy to legitimise its policies of austerity, militarism and war.

In January 1978, future Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher made the infamous statement that “people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture”. In 2014, then Tory defence secretary Michael Fallon repeated Thatcher’s words.

Contrast the kid-gloves Johnson is treated with compared to Jeremy Corbyn. Since he was elected as Labour Party leader in 2015, a hysterical witch-hunt against him and the wider left has been led by the Blairites, the media and the ruling Conservative Party, equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

No allegation has been too fantastical and contrived to avoid being heavily cited amid banner headlines, with the necessary comments solicited from pro-Zionist MPs and groups.

There can be no doubt the Tories are a hotbed of fascist sympathisers.
Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

AND then there were two. The next, and hopefully last prime minister of this so-called United Kingdom, will be one of the following two:

1: Hardline Brexiteer, committed, if necessary, to no deal

2: Latter-day Brexiteer, but with a special hard line on making sure those uppity jocks don’t get ideas above their station. They are, after all, vermin, to be exterminated, are they not? (At least that’s what the frontrunner for the top job thinks, anyway!)

None of these options are good for Scotland, in any way, shape or form. The time has now come to set the wheels in motion for indyref2. Never mind asking for a Section 30 order. Hold an advisory referendum, and if the result comes back in favour of independence, we withdraw from the Treaty of Union.
Alastair Naughton
Aberdeen

AS I have been watching the various shenanigans in the Tory Party, I remembered a comment from Peter Oborne on The Alex Salmond Show the other week; Mr Oborne was the political editor of the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator and a political columnist for the Daily Mail – a true, dedicated Tory.

While speculating on who would succeed Theresa May – at that time there were 10 in the running – he said it was the “constitutional custom” for the outgoing prime minister to recommend her replacement to Her Majesty, but this could be withheld if her successor could not command a majority in the House.

I idly wondered if Mrs May could go down in history with a last use of her favourite sentence: “Now is not the time.”

Then again, she would not want to spoil their six-weeks holiday while the UK burns.
Jim Lynch
Edinburgh

NOW we know that the party in government at Westminster, and likely to be so for the foreseeable future, is made up of well over 60% of members who are happy to see the Union with Scotland and Northern Ireland destroyed to ensure that they leave the EU.

Is it not time, therefore, for our Scottish Government and our contingent of MEPs to change tack rather than considering that independence for Scotland is the only way out of this mess for us?

Instead, should they not be enlightening the EU negotiators and others in positions of influence on the reality of Scotland’s position within the UK? Ever since the Treaty of 1707 between Scotland and England, the parliaments of both have not existed, and Westminster has technically been a new one of equal partners, in which each was promised to be of equal standing and influence.

This surely means that the fact that England merely accepted a few “delegates” into the existing parliament and continued to regard it as “English” – witness EVEL just recently – was actually a breach of the Treaty by England, with other breaches to follow.

The EU needs to realise that, whatever the appearances indicate, neither nation has any superiority in law at Westminster – that has simply been arrogated to itself by England on the basis of superiority of numbers.

It must therefore follow that, if the legal partner, Scotland, decided to leave this union, and that made the remaining one, England, the inheritor of EU membership, the reverse must also be valid. If England alone is happy to abandon its partner, as current polls show, then they should be able to leave the EU and Scotland continue as inheritor of membership.

In business, when one partner chooses to leave, the business does not necessarily close and the other partner can carry on as before if he so wishes, perhaps even welcoming in a new partner. Northern Ireland, anyone? Or even Wales? So why can the EU not offer this solution to the intractable Brexit problem? Do they falsely believe that at Westminster England is the legal master and Scotland a subservient region, because we have sheepishly accepted the enactment of these roles for far too long? That does not make it legal. I would love to hear Andrew Tickell’s views on this.

Let us not forget David Davis’s pronouncement (anent Brexit!) that “there is no Treaty in the world where a sovereign nation undertakes to join up and can only leave when the other side says so”. Should fighting for our existing right to retain our status quo not be a second string to our bow?
P Davidson
Falkirk

YOU’VE probably heard about the Scottish Government’s recent Holyrood statement on reforming the Gender Recognition Act. Despite their attempts at spin and their superficial displays of allyship, I want to make this abundantly clear: the Scottish Government are despicable cowards who have caved in to a minority of transphobic bigots within their ranks.

Self-described progressive politicians have a moral duty to help the vulnerable, even when it’s unpopular to do so. However, the SNP don’t even have the excuse of a lack of public support: the Scottish consultation on GRA reform found that 65% of Scots supported reform, while 66% supported under-18’s and non-binary gender recognition.

The Scottish and English consultations made trans people the target of daily abuse and misinformation in the national media. Their proposal to reopen the consultation (despite the original finding majority support for reform) will invite more transphobic abuse and send a clear message to bigots – “you have allies in the Scottish Government who will rerun consultations if you don’t get your way.”

Trans people can already legally use the single-sex facilities of their choice under the Equality Act. Despite fear-mongering about “self-ID”, it’s been legal for almost a decade. The Gender Recognition Act as it stands only affects pension eligibility and birth certificates. It’s telling that the SNP couldn’t manage such a minor reform, even with public support.

The reforms proposed by the Scottish Government are not proper statutory gender self-declaration and come nowhere close to international best practice, which they claimed they would follow. They’re proposing a three-month delay on applications and six months of “living in the acquired gender”, which is the evidence requirement they said they were removing. This creates a catch-22 situation where trans people must live as their gender but aren’t legally recognised until afterwards.

Cabinet secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville has said that the reformed GRA process would remain a “significant undertaking” which “requires the same level of commitment from the individual” as the existing system. This contradicts the Scottish Government’s promise to make the process easier, less bureaucratic and less humiliating.

The system of gender self-declaration in place in Ireland since 2015 only requires a statutory declaration. Research has found no evidence of abuse and a massive benefit to trans people’s well-being.

The government’s proposals look nothing like the Irish model or the Icelandic model, which was passed unanimously earlier this week; both are true statutory self-declaration.

We all must stand up for trans and non-binary Scots and call for true statutory self-declaration, as well as under-18’s and non-binary gender recognition. We must condemn the SNP’s superficial commitment to trans equality and their capitulation to transphobic bigotry. We must call for GRA reform now.
Patricia Johnston
Edinburgh