WHEN I look at the present Westminster power grab attempt and the Scottish Government response I wonder if there is not a better approach the Scottish Government could take.

The Westminster case, as I understand it, is that the UK needs a standardised market approach right across the UK to ensure a level playing field in an open market. Well that is a reasonable point which has validity. Right now, we have this in the EU single market.

Now the people in England and Wales voted to leave the EU; there was no vote on leaving the single market. The people in Northern Ireland and in Scotland voted to remain in the EU, and therefore in the single market.

Now the Westminster government decided that leaving the EU meant also leaving the single market and they tried to apply that to all parts of the UK, whatever the people had voted for. They were unable to apply this to Northern Ireland because of international agreements they had entered into with Ireland and the EU, and have been forced to accept that there will be an open border in Ireland and Northern Ireland will “align” with the EU single market in order to allow this to happen.

Now, of course Boris Johnson denies that this is so, but we now know that there will be a border in the Irish Sea which will enable Northern Ireland to have an open border with the EU. It is also obvious that Northern Ireland will need to retain the powers being returned from the EU in order to continue to align with the single market.

So it is possible for the UK to agree with the EU to allow one part of the UK to remain in the EU single market and to remain aligned with it in future.

This being the case, Scotland must also be allowed to remain in the single market, and needs to have the powers which are coming back from the EU sent to Edinburgh in order to maintain this alignment in the future.

Westminster can’t argue against the impossibility of Scotland staying in the single market if it has agreed that Northern Ireland can do this, and the Scottish Government have a clear mandate from the Scottish people to demand the right to stay in the EU single market and avoid much of the disaster of a No-Deal Brexit and Westminster power grab.

Andy Anderson

Saltcoats

IN the past week we have had the vote on an amendment to protect farming and agriculture, food standards etc fail in Westminster, with all six Scottish Tory MPs voting against the amendment – so much for protecting farmers.

Then we have the amendment to protect the NHS failing, and the Tories using their majority to leave it open to predators.

Then comes along the Russia report and in Scotland we have Murdo Fraser pontificating about Alex Salmond on RT but forgetting to mention the £1million donation to the Tory party from a Russian obligarch and of course the lunch with dear Ruth Davidson bought by the wife of a Russian donor for £20,000.

The best comment was London as a laundromat for Russian money, with so many people involved in the trough that they could not afford to investigate – probably afraid what would surface. Not so much a Trojan horse as a set of Russian dolls with only the first one removed.

Winifred McCartney

Paisley

JOHNSON’S “gross discourtesy” towards Scotland and its people. These words could have been written about many of the stupid and risible comments Dr Samuel Johnson and his companion James Boswell included in their accounts of their lengthy journey through Scotland and the Hebrides in 1773.

The portrayals of Dr Johnson’s take on Scottish life, cultures and habitat in 1773 still exemplify how academic intelligence is no guarantee of common sensibility and social decency.

Both Johnson and Ayrshireman Boswell’s anglocentricity, shared by so many of the well-to-do in England and Scotland at that time, contributed popular, if misguided, literary expression to the “Scottish cringe” from which we know Scotland suffers to this day – as well as to the longevity of that misguided anglocentricity.

Now we have another Johnson, this time masquerading as Prime Minister, seemingly intent on proving that anything appalling the Dr could say in 1773 he can do worse nearly 250 years later. What an embarrassment to others sharing the good name Johnson.

James Dippie

Dalry, North Ayrshire

Are there sufficient walk-in fridges in Scotland to accommodate Johnson’s visit?

Joe Cowan

Balmedie

THE uninvited and unadvised visit to our country by Johnson and his deliberate lack of courtesy to not only our First Minister but to every person living in Scotland is a panic measure for the delectation of his dwindling support nationally. His Eton boyhood has failed to equip him to behave like a gentleman. A few months in a charm school would have been a better investment. He is not fit to be a Prime Minister.

John Hamilton

Bearsden

ALEX Salmond stated during the 2014 referendum “this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity”, meaning that during the past 30 years the independence movement had taken off, accelerated by the election of Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister, and was now in a position to win.

The Tory spin doctors have turned this into “the FM promised”. This is symptomatic of the corruption that pervades Westminster, starting with a “tough it out” attitude of wrongdoers to the corrupt way of rewarding donors with taxpayers’ money and the half-truths, redactions and distortions that emerge from Number 10.

It is time the current rule book for Westminster was torn up and true democracy installed. Unfortunately there are not many examples in the world, but an independent Scotland could lead the way.

Mike Underwood

Linlithgow