AS the election enters its last hours, it is worth contemplating what we are being asked to vote for. The government made this a single-issue vote – Johnson’s Brexit deal. Other issues have been sidelined to make this a contest between Johnson’s Tories and Corbyn’s Labour, with their parties being given parts as extras in the grand design. So what is the choice facing voters?

1. A divided Labour party that is:

(a) led by a leader who does not have the support of many of the elected members, some of whom openly criticise his leadership,

(b) split over Brexit, and is campaigning with a different message in different constituencies,

(c) refusing to consider the possibility of agreeing with other parties to defeat the Johnson party.

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2. A new Conservative party that has lurched to the right and wants to desert Britain’s allies in Europe at any cost to pretend to be a world power and go back to the days of the Empire. Its leading members have, over the past few months demonstrated what that means:

(a) Andrea Leadsom condemned Parliament for “frustrating the will of the executive” and promised legislation to prevent this in future; apparently unaware that the English Civil War was fought to secure the will of the people, as expressed by parliament, over that of the executive. Of course English and British history may have been re-written without my being aware of it.

(b) Jacob Rees-Mogg has extolled Brexit as being for the benefit of all, yet the firm he co-founded has moved its financial headquarters to Dublin to avoid the impact of Brexit.

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(c) Dominic Raab has appeared to condemn the United Nations, which had criticised the UK for retaining the Chagros Islands as a colonial outpost: he obviously still thinks in terms of Empire (and sadly is not alone among the Boris Tories).

(d) Home Secretary Priti Patel has claimed that a Corbyn government will result in “an extra 52 murders a year”: no evidence, no argument from a politician who cares not about truth, only winning – at any cost.

(e) Boris Johnson’s answer to everything is either a lie or “let’s get Brexit done!” accompanied by the famous punch in the air. He refuses to look at a picture of a child on a hospital floor, but promises billion to the NHS, or anything else appropriate to the question. As a Cabinet minister he plotted to oust the then Prime Minister, and when he became PM he fired ministers who refused to support his Brexit plan.

(f) Perhaps the last word should go to the chairman of a local party, when the MP was expelled from the Conservative party for rejecting the Boris deal. Asked on TV what he felt about his long-serving MP being denied the party whip, he uttered the chilling statement, “the party expects loyalty to the leader!” It is to be hoped that he did not realise the history of that motto.

We Scots are fortunate in having an alternative to the above bunch of political chancers, and is to be hoped that by voting tactically we can save ourselves and our fellow British in England from becoming the political equivalent of lemmings.

T J Dowds
Cumbernauld

THE day of decision is upon us, we are being blitzed by demands for tactical voting, negative every one.

There will be a number of difficult decisions to be made, but these can wait until after independence; at present they are made for us, and as someone stated the other day they are made on our behalf but not by us.

With independence we will be clearer – without it we will be dictated to.

Vote SNP today, anything else is anti-SNP, ie anti-Scotland. At the age of 85 I personally have nothing to gain.

Jim Lynch
Edinburgh

I SEE that one of the mediocrities who serves in Johnson’s UK Cabinet attempted, in an interview, to defend Johnson over the latter’s behaviour when shown a photograph of a boy lying on the floor of a hospital in England. He described Johnson’s reaction as “natural.” As ever, he was not pressed on this bizarre statement. In the world inhabited by most people, it is not natural for someone to do as Johnson did, namely to take the phone off the reporter and put it away in his own pocket. Indeed, most people would call that theft.

Gavin Brown
Linlithgow

YOU ask whether a surprise result may happen in Edinburgh South (Seat by Seat, December 10). I live here. And Ian Murray has been a great MP. Hard-working and a credit to us.

However, I have voted this time for my children’s future. I have voted for independence. I have voted SNP. Ian is out of step. He needs to realise this. His faith in Westminster will not deliver the Scotland I desire.

We need to mature as a country and take control of our own future.

Jim Taylor
Edinburgh

I’M worried and anxious about today. I hope the SNP do well. I hope Labour do well in England. I hope Plaid Cymru do well in Wales. But most of all I hope Boris doesn’t get a majority as predicted in the media. I also so wish the election was for independence and not about Westminster.

Robin Maclean
Fort Augustus

I NOTE with amusement the FM’s message “LOCK BORIS OUT”. It really should read LOCK BORIS UP!

Why anyone should vote for his party is beyond me. For many years now his party have cut budgets for the police, education, NHS, councils, defence etc etc. It beggars belief that they could get a solitary vote at all. Instead, all that the Tory Westminster promises is that the country falls headlong into a disastrous Brexit of 25 -30% unemployment.

Harry Schneider
Newton Stewart