IN reply to Alan Magnus-Bennett, with regards the points he raises in his reply to my letter in Sunday’s National. I would say that politics is usually about finding the middle ground. The Middle ground between the status quo and a breakaway independence movement is a legal referendum.

I drew a point of how a dictatorship can begin in my original letter and if Boris Johnson continues to refuse to allow a legal plebiscite, then he is putting himself in that position in the international political community and he’s already got some problems with his Withdrawal Bill going through Parliament. At some time in the future he has to give consent if only to facilitate trade deals with countries as we are soon to be out of the EU.

I don’t know how old Alan Magnus-Bennett is, but I had the vote at the 1979 referendum. Then we were being told by the Unionist parties that this would kill the independence movement dead and the SNP. They got up to all the tricks you could imagine, even giving dead people a No vote! The same arguments were used in 1997 but at least they didn’t give dead voters a vote although I’m sure a number of Tory members would have liked to. Presently the SNP is one of the biggest political parties in the UK but only stands in Scotland, so their arguments that it would kill the independence movement and the SNP didn’t materialise.

Presently we have Boris Johnson standing firm in his commitment not to allow a Section 30 order, but for how long? King Canute was unable to order the tide to go back and Boris is certainly not a king, even if he does want to invoke a king’s prerogative. It’s an open secret that Johnson has appointed his tame Aberdonian, Michael Gove, to lead the anti independence campaign. You don’t appoint someone to run a campaign if there isn’t going to be a campaign! So effectively Michael Gove is going to be leading the NO/Better Together Campaign episode two after helping to win the Brexit referendum.

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A second open secret is that Ruth Davidson was supposed to be elevated to the Lords so she could be in his cabinet. Well she did become Baroness Ruth Davidson – but don’t call her Baroness Ruth Davidson – and she is leader of the Scottish Tories in Holyrood after resigning from that position. The elected Scottish Tory leader, Jackson Carlaw, got an unceremonial public football boot up the backside, to allow Johnson’s pet poodle, DRoss to become Scottish Tory leader (unopposed) even although he can’t sit in Holyrood. Again it isn’t something you do if you aren’t contemplating some other action like a referendum. Not only that but Baroness Ruth Davidson must be fully aware that if Scotland becomes independent, then she and all the other Scottish peers can’t sit in the House of Lords.

If you listen to the rhetoric that’s coming out of certain Tories (and ex-Prime Ministers) it isn’t to placate the Scottish electorate, it’s to placate a small elite minority of very wealthy ex public schoolboy English Nationalists who want to turn the country back about 150 years. The vast majority of them have estates in the south east of England or very expensive homes in parts of London.

Every Prime Minister since Harold Wilson saw Winnie Ewing win the Hamilton by-election in 1967, has admitted that if the SNP or the Scottish electorate want independence, then Westminster can’t stop us. The last 15 opinion polls have the SNP and independence at well over the 50% mark. The SNP are on to win about 70 to 75 seats out of 131 seats. The Greens could take about another 10 seats, so that could be about 80 seats for those wanting Scottish independence. The Tory vote is expected to halve as is the Labour vote. There’s an old adage that says if you can’t run and hide, then turn and fight. Brexit hasn’t hit us yet, but it will by May 6 and we’re being told that we can expect lorry drivers to boycott bringing things to the UK for some time until the fiasco is sorted out. Not to mention that food and other stuff from the EU could be about 10% to 20% more expensive.

Boris Johnson is maybe a bumbling oaf and a fool, but he isn’t naïve. He’s well aware of the opinion polls coming out of Scotland and the complaints about Union Jackery in the supermarkets. He knows that he doesn’t have any other answer come May 7 and the results show the SNP with a massive majority in a parliament where no party is supposed to get an overall majority.

Johnson knows that there has to be a referendum at some point as that’s the only way to stop the argument. What he’s doing right now is getting his team selected so he can fight, then he want’s to pick the time. He knows he can’t hold it before May 6, so it has to be after that and if as expected then he will have to negotiate with the SNP over the date. As I said at the beginning of my letter: politics is usually about finding the middle ground and a referendum is the middle ground.

Alexander Potts

Kilmarnock