ALAN Crocket (Sunday National, January 17) is wrong in his one-sided call for the SNP to stand down on the list in favour of the Greens and others. The first fatal flaw is there is no guarantee that we will win as many as 70 seats out of 73.

This is, I sadly fear, over-optimistic, especially as the Greens have confirmed they will be standing candidates in the constituencies. Has he forgotten that in 2015 David Mundell retained his Westminster seat over the SNP by a smaller majority than the number of votes the Green candidate won?

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Similarly, Ruth Davidson won Edinburgh Central in 2016 at Holyrood by a smaller majority than the number of votes the Greens won. As they intend to field a large number this year, how many other seats will they cost the SNP? Where is the campaign to get them to stand down on the constituency contents? I also understand that the Independence for Scotland Party are considering standing in some constituency contests, so this is equally applicable to them.

The second flaw is that while I will be delighted to be proved wrong, the LibDems have consistently shown that they dig in when they win seats. Consequently, I would suggest Willie Rennie and Alex Cole-Hamilton will be very difficult to dislodge. They will focus their resources on retaining these two plus Orkney and Shetland, and look to increase their list MSP numbers from one.

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Despite Brexit causing problems for the fishing and farming communities, again I would expect the Tories will win more than one. I would, however, be surprised if Labour held onto any constituency seats, but Jackie Baillie in Dumbarton will be hard to dislodge and may scrape home.

An analysis of local government transfers shows that while Patrick Harvie, John Finnie and some others probably do genuinely believe in independence, too many of their supporters have given their transfers to LibDems and Tories in particular. Can they be trusted to deliver on independence, especially as some like Ross Greer have shown an intense dislike for the SNP? Similarly, I have read too much anti-SNP vitriol from these new parties to trust them.

Can I also remind all that ahead of 2016, RISE claimed they could win list seats but even in Highland with Jean Urquhart – who had been elected in 2011 as an SNP MSP – at the head of their list they could not get above about 1.5%, nowhere near the 6% to 7% required to win a list seat. I would be surprised if any of the new parties do any better this time around.

For all of the above reasons, only both votes SNP will guarantee an independence referendum later this year, especially as the publishing of the draft referendum bill with dates is due in March and will be front and centre of the SNP manifesto for May.

Munro Ross
Inverness

KATHLEEN Nutt has written several terrific reports for The National regarding the sudden resignation (or sacking) of Richard Leonard as the Labour party’s Scottish Branch Manager, but I must make a correction to her article (Race to find new leader before election, January 15). It states “Leonard’s successor will be the fifth Scottish Labour leader since the 2014 independence referendum and the tenth since devolution in 1999. The previous leaders are Donald Dewar, Henry McLeish, Jack McConnell, Wendy Alexander, Iain Gray, Johann Lamont, Jim Murphy and Kezia Dugdale.”

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But Mr Leonard is only the third Scottish Labour Leader since devolution. As correctly highlighted by Johann Lamont during her resignation in October 2014 (as leader of the Labour MSPs) there was no such position as “leader” of the Labour party in Scotland. Between 1999 and December 2014, Labour Party rules clearly stated the leaders of their party in Scotland were Tory Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Milliband. The first six names in the article were only leaders of Labour MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. It was only with the arrival of Mr Murphy in December 2014 that the position leader of the Labour Party in Scotland was created – which co-incidentally was very convenient as he was a Westminster MP, not a MSP.

Roddy MacNeill
East Kilbride

I SAW Jack McConnell on the TV today referring to SNP voters as “extreme nationalists”. As a supporter of independence and an SNP voter I am somewhat perplexed by this description.

What on earth is an “extreme nationalist”? I have never met one. I have met thousands of ardent supporters of independence and not one of them have ever seemed extreme to me.

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We don’t talk of extreme Glaswegians or extreme Aberdonians even though I am certain that they are proud of their respective cities.

Perhaps Jack and his ilk should wake up to the fact that it is ordinary Scots who want independence and there is nothing extreme about that.

Harry Key
Largoward

IN a TV interview on Monday I noted that Jack McConnell (full title: Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale) appears to think his fellow Scots are incapable of thinking of more than two subjects in these anxious times. Given that the noble Lord claimed the highest expenses in that “other place” in 2018/19, independence would mean losing what can only be called “a nice little earner”.

David McCann
Alloa

IT’S claimed that when Nixon went to China, the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, in response to a question about the impact of the French Revolution, answered by saying it was too early to say. Some reckon that the question and the response was due to a mistranslation. True or not, we can surely all agree that it is indeed to early to say what the impact of the American Civil War is on the culture and the politics of the United States.

Bill Ramsay
via email