ONLY a few months ago most Scottish Tories were working to prevent Boris Johnson becoming the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and thus the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, while all Scottish Tory MPs and MSPs were repudiating any possibility that Brexit would result in a “special deal” for Northern Ireland.

Even the most ardent pro-Union Scottish politician knows that such a disadvantageous trading arrangement will be the final nail in the coffin for many Scottish businesses that are already seriously concerned about the highly damaging impacts of a “Hard Brexit” or No Deal.

READ MORE: Brexit: How the new deal with the EU would work

Who amongst those supporting Better Together in the 2014 campaign to keep Scotland in the “United Kingdom” has the principles and integrity to now speak out and say “this is not what I expected and not what I voted for”?

Alternatively, perhaps Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling or Sir Ian Wood could take the time to share their personal wisdom with the Scottish people and openly explain how a UK Government that would contemplate such a “special deal” is thereby serving the best interests of Scottish businesses and furtheringdemocracy in a country where the vast majority of the population either wish Scotland to remain in the EU or would wish an independent Scotland to join EFTA or the EEA.

Stan Grodynski
Longniddry, East Lothian

READ MORE: Johnson's Brexit deal faces legal challenge in Scottish court​

THE latest Brexit deal agreed between the UK Government and the European Commission flies totally in the face of the Good Friday agreement.

This requires that any arrangements must have the consent of both unionist and nationalist communities. However, the continuation of EU customs arrangements under the new deal will require a simple majority in the Assembly.

The DUP is correct to raise these concerns, the irony in all this being that while it is playing up the professed sanctity of the Good Friday agreement, it voted against it at the time.

Alex Orr
Edinburgh

YOUNG Scots for Independence activists Steven Campbell and Laura Pollock have nothing to apologise for regarding the duplicitous behaviour of the BBC (BBC ‘liars’ as young SNP pair face radio ambush, October 17). Yet again this politically motivated broadcasting organisation tried to exploit its interviewees in order to push the BBC’s mission of protecting the British political establishment.

READ MORE: LISTEN: Here's the interview with SNP youngsters BBC say was 'cordial and fair'

The YSI activists were clearly conned by the BBC in order to pretend they had some SNP representation while launching yet another SNP-bad story. The BBC is well aware of what it is doing – it is deliberately manipulating the news agenda to slate the SNP and any support for independence, and there is absolutely no concern for how it does this or the impact it may have on the YSI members it chose to exploit.

Of course you’ll never see the likes of Nigel Farage, Ruth Davidson or Jo Swinson experience such an attack by the BBC – as they back the BBC’s support of the “British” political establishment. This deceitful behaviour by the BBC is yet another sign that this organisation should never be trusted by anyone in Scotland, and yet again highlights why we should all be refusing to pay the licence fee which supports such behaviour.

Cllr Kenny MacLaren
Paisley

THE use of the term Scexit by Unionists just shows that British nationalists think the world revolves around London.

Scotland is an equal partner in a Union which is broken, and seeks to become a normal country. Independence is merely completing the powers of home rule that Labour’s founding fathers envisaged.

It is duplicitous in the extreme for Labour and LibDems to call for another EU referendum after only three years when they don’t hold an electoral mandate for this, yet continue to deny indyref2 when the SNP holds a triple mandate.

Recent comments on how much the SNP spent on the 2016 EU referendum Remain campaign don’t stand up, as a check of the EU election expenses at the Electoral Commission website shows no record of any expenditure whatsoever by Scottish Labour, and all the money spent by the LibDems in Scotland came from their London head office.

As all recent opinion polls indicate that Labour can’t win a General Election, will Labour supporters really prefer more Boris Johnson rule to home rule and self-government, particularly when Scotland is taken out of the EU against our democratic will?

Fraser Grant
Edinburgh

THE recent ghastly spectacle foisted on the nation as the Queen’s Speech has been well and truly lambasted by articles and letters in The National. Deservedly so! The letter by Pierce-Patrick Haynes (October 15), I regarded as being quite exceptional – thank goodness he is on our side!

I also spared a thought for a splendid little chapbook of the past titled Robert Burns the Democrat, written by a Paisley man, JR Campbell.

Last January the website Culture Matters made this pamphlet available on the internet free of charge – it is well worth a read by anyone interested in what our national bard had to say on political matters.

The word “Democrat” was, of course, used in the poet’s time to describe those who supported the Jacobins in France. (Burns has been criticised for being, both a Jacobite and Jacobin, but that is the matter for another day).

Norrie Paton
Campbeltown