BOBBY Brennan asks why George Kerevan continues “to snipe” at the SNP (February 22).

I ask Bobby Brennan why any questioning is seen as “sowing confusion and mistrust”. A great number of the rank and file are already very uneasy about the direction of the party and its lack of bite. If we are indeed unable to criticise or even question, then we in the SNP have indeed become, as Jackson Carlaw stated, “cult-like”. We do not pose questions without suggesting answers, and the new pan-indy movement is a serious attempt to get a huge number of extra votes turned into a large number of party list seats instead of being wasted.

READ MORE: If we are to be truly independent we must change our mindset

We are allowed to question the strategy or lack of it – anything else is just blind obedience. It is undeniable that the previous SNP strategy of “both votes SNP” indeed wasted almost a million votes on the party list. If a pro-indy alliance or party can hoover up the party votes then the popular mandate for indy may well become unstoppable, or at the very least much stronger.

The SNP prides itself on beating a proportional representation system which was designed specifically to keep the SNP in its box. Why not take it to its logical conclusion and vote for other parties backing independence? The only way it could backfire is if the SNP lose seats on the first-past-the-post list, but they have more chance of doing that by being soft on independence and being, as Ruth Wishart described it, “endlessly pleading supplicants”.

George Kerevan referenced party conferences as “pitches for besuited young fogeys looking for career advancement” (check – just mill about at any party conference and you will see them), the party’s “growing moderation” (check – look at the timid efforts on curbing excessive rents and taking on the landed vested interests; the iniquitous right wing Growth Commission, heralding a brand new glittering era of two decades more of austerity to go with the one-and-a-half we have just had; the reluctance to go to a Scottish currency any time soon – thank the Lord for Tim Rideout, otherwise we would not even have a glimmer of hope on that. The list goes on. And going slightly off-piste, why are Heathrow allowed in to SNP conferences, with corporate jollies for the chosen few (not us plebs)? Oh, yes, they are serving Scotland, aren’t they? A pound spent in Croydon and all that...

What serious hope does Nicola have of taking a delegation to No 10 to plead (endlessly pleading again) to get a Scottish immigration visa? All the time we are begging we don’t build a case for the undecided, we just look like numpties with no backbone, and as for the government being there for all Scots, yes, okay, but most Scots are left-wing and our party is adopting right-wing policies. For who? To persuade the bankers, the conservative, and the whole neoliberal cesspit that is Western economies that we are nothing to be afraid of, we won’t rock the boat? Well, we need to rock the boat.

Has Nicola Sturgeon or any of her advisers given any serious thought to dismantling the banking system for Scotland and making the new banks serve the people, not the other way round? There is nothing in the ghastly Growth Commission to suggest it. Do any of them have any idea that there is another way rather than borrowing from the banks to fund projects? 97% of money is just created by the banks from thin air – they don’t seriously believe that the money is there before it is lent out, do they? Only 3% is issued by government. What if we reversed that? 97% issued by the government and 3% by the ban.When government printed money to build, say, a hospital (don’t get me started on private finance initiatives), it would not be a debt on their books, they would have an asset instead, and Scotland and its people could get on with living life, not living to finance the banks.

The same would hold for Universal Basic Income. Instead of borrowing money to fund this, you just create the money (the government, not the banks), so one of the big objections to UBI is done away with. Nicola Sturgeon’s compulsory reading list should include the New Economics Foundation’s “Scot Pound: digital money for the common good”.

The SNP have become the mainstream right wing they used to despise, and they need to change. If that means SNP members voicing their unease, so be it.

Julia Pannell
Friockheim