From Brexit to Covid, it’s plain we can’t trust Tories on democracy

Brexit will be hard, which will affect the poorer and less mobile socially and financially disproportionately. It will cause hardship, illness and unnecessary death, if Universal Credit changes are a good guide. Dominic Cummings is reported to have his fingers, if not his wrist and arms, in the Brexit strategy.

With Covid, we already see the pandemic affecting the less well off, and as the more affluent and influential exert entitlement, Cummings is the best example. The PM’s close political adviser has been an intimate observer of the SAGE discussions, and in his recent statement was a strong advocate of the defined rules. Two more witnesses have come forward to state that Cummings was seen walking about at Barnard Castle, further destroying Cummings’s credibility as a responsible, trustworthy person. The science professionals that broke “their” own rules resigned.

Trust in politicians and their advisers has been lost. It vanished like the proverbial sna’ aff a dyke and chips away at the Covid phase rules and also people’s belief in democracy. If they can, then so can we.

Democracy, engagement and interest in political decision-making has dropped off in some sections of society as being a waste, as you never get a fair crack, so what is the point? These are comments often repeated from those with little interest in the continual political double-speak.

Why don’t we have a deputy prime minister in the UK Government? Most other normal democracies have an elected politician that takes over when the PM is out of the office or out of sorts, rather than an “adviser”/svengali.

So how much longer do we need to watch this slow-motion car crash of Cummings and the Durham breach of trust and his interference in the UK Government, democracy and Brexit strategy negotiations?

Will he be sacked, but sooner would be better rather than later, before another unmitigated disaster befalls the UK population?

Alistair Ballantyne

Birkhill, Angus

DEBATE about post-pandemic restructuring of senior football in Scotland seems to incline towards just more of the elitism that so typifies what goes on in the world in general. It bears all the hallmarks of globalisation and how this is perceived as the be-all and end-all.

Concentrate on fewer big clubs competing against each other in top leagues in which said clubs play each other multiple times in each season. Forget about the third and fourth league clubs – naturally they won’t draw the crowds or attract TV coverage, and anyway they aren’t based in the cities or the big towns. The Gretna phenomenon is by definition freakish and cannot define anything other than that the exception proves the rule.

That this dedication to elitism is what raises performance standards in international football is a very dubious notion. Many could argue that Scotland played better football in international competitions back in the day when its league set-up encompassed more clubs in the top tier. I just dabbled into this and my very first check was for the year 1951. Hibs topped the 16-club Division A. The clubs played one another home and away, once only, and this added up to 30 league matches in all for each club. And lo and behold, that very same year Scotland won the Home Championship, beating England at Wembley 3-2, and won friendlies against France, Denmark, and Belgium (away). Their only victors were Austria, who beat us both in Glasgow and Vienna.

Hearts were fourth in the top division and Partick sixth, both ahead of Celtic in seventh. Rangers 2, Dundee 3, Aberdeen 5, and Hibs were 10 points clear of Rangers at the top. Raith and East Fife, too, were in the top 10.

As for world-beaters Brazil, it is common knowledge that many of their renowned stars began their careers on the sandy back streets or on the beaches in the usual improvising way of all youngsters, as in Scotland on its back court spaces where little rubber balls often substituted for the too-expensive big leather ones. Sandier surfaces and sunnier weather was maybe all that kept us from the fame and glory gained by our South American friends.

Nor should we forget it was the Scots who first introduced the glorious game to Brazil!

I hope there is leverage for thought in all this ...

Ian Johnstone

Peterhead

AS we gird our loins for the independence battle ahead, let us not forget that Berwick was stolen by the British Government as recently as 1885. Prior to that, it was regarded as “neutral territory”, having been grabbed by English forces in one of the Border wars.

The layout of Berwick town is typically east-coast Scottish. The illegal “grab” enabled the much later allocation of what we thought were Scottish coastal waters to England. I think that this must now be challenged. The SNP and Scottish Greens should consider putting up candidates in the next General Election for the Berwick constituency to “test the water”. We may find that, after the coronavirus shambles, Berwick citizens would find the more democratic Scottish system of government more attractive than what they have now. It is simply ridiculous that the county area of Berwickshire should be in Scotland, yet its main town is supposedly in Northumberland. England has form in this – witness the absorption of Cornwall and the attempted annexation of Monmouthshire from Wales, which has been reversed, happily. Monmouth was classed as an “English county” in encyclopaedias up to the 1930s. United Kingdom? No – England and colonies!

The solution is in our hands.

Andrew McCrae

Gourock

I REMEMBER well Roseanna Cunningham’s 1995 by-election campaign. In the hustings at Kinross the Tory candidate started his spiel saying “I support everything John Major has done”. Almost 100 people burst out laughing, remembering when the Tory government had lost control of the UK economy on Black Monday in 1992.

That evening confirmed the maxim that when floating voters are mocking the country’s leaders, then an incompetent government has to go. Cunningham’s by-election win was a step towards the Tories’ defeat in the 1997 election.

Though the SNP is too small to influence changes at Westminster, the alternative of independence exists, providing sufficient support is obtained. Perhaps enough No voters and other doubters, having laughed at the clowns now in charge there, are realising that England should be left behind in its own chaos.

Robert Walker

Kinross

I READ the letters of Jim Finnie and David Crines in Wednesday’s edition with a somewhat sinking heart. The analysis of Scotland’s place in the Union is spot on – hunting, fishing golf, tourism – and it is true that the “rule book” was long ago ripped up. Ironically, it is the SNP who continue to act by that rule book, calling out on every occasion the way Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are treated with contempt. The problem is, that is all we do.

David Crines rightly points out that there is a real danger that the independence dream will die on our niceness and idealism. We have to have a road map to independence, with defined steps along the way. But then he himself becomes a bit dreamy in asking us to hold an independence referendum which Westminster will not sanction but will be legally binding. How? I have read the Scotland Act 1988 Section 30 and frankly have not got much further. As far as I can see it states what is reserved to Westminster but has nothing to say about changing what is reserved, apart from going cap in hand every time we want something. Donald Dewar and co could never have intended that, could they?

The idea that an illegal referendum would not be binding on the UK or the EU but would somehow bind the Scottish Government is, I think, absurd, and the idea of them opening negotiations for secession is a non-starter. The Scottish Government would not do it, and the UK Government would just ignore it.

We proceed nonetheless, he says, provoking a constitutional crisis, and public opinion throughout the UK would back our right to secede. Why on earth would people elsewhere in the UK back us, when Scotland’s money is what is keeping the UK solvent-ish, plus they view Scotland as an irrelevance? Don’t forget, our illustrious if invisible PM has never apologised for or retracted his view that Scots are “vermin, to be exterminated”. I’m sure it was only a jolly jape, to be best appreciated in the 18th century which Jacob Rees-Mogg inhabits.

Careful planning and unbreakable determination will not get us independence, and the world does not see Scotland as having any kind of plight. What they see is that we had a vote and we blew it, or as Unionists might say, you had your chance, now get back in your box.

And the idea that the international community would help Scotland is dreamland. How is that working for Catalonia? How did it work for us in 2014 when the US president said he did not want the UK broken up and the EU sided with Spain asserting they would veto our EU membership (even though it is doubtful they could have and they have since backtracked)?

Jim Finnie seems to adopt just as idealistic an approach, that we should point out how many times we have been ignored (done that), appeal to the international community (didn’t work last time), and then unilaterally secede (how do you get back into the beloved EU then?).

Both seem to think that international politics is a question of idealism triumphing over the stranglehold which nation states have over their “regions”. If it does succeed, it can take for ever. Look at South Africa and Nelson Mandela’s 27 years in jail. How many of us would do that? How many of our politicians or us would do what Catalonia’s politicians have done? Don’t forget, they were imprisioned and are still there for holding what was regarded as an illegal referendum, for allowing schools to be used for voting, for allowing ballot boxes to be delivered, for the police not enforcing the law rigorously enough.

It will be interesting to see the outcome of the case being brought by the People’s Alliance against Section 30. But most of all, what we need is what we have not yet got – that is, a clear majority for independence. We are focusing on the mechanics of independence, overlooking the fact that we are still only about 50-50 Unionism vs independence. If we go off at a tangent now and try and enforce independence unilaterally, would the Unionists in Scotland not do just what has been suggested we do – that is, appeal to the UK and the international community on the basis that their rights are being trampled?

Julia Pannell

Friockheim, Tayside