EXCELLENT piece by Kevin McKenna in yesterday’s paper (Robertson vs Cherry is a failure of SNP leadership, February 26). Each of these two candidates brings something special to the table, and if Holyrood loses out on either it will be a bad day for both the SNP and the wider independence movement, not to mention Scotland itself.

I think what we are seeing is the beginning of the fight for the soul of the party. Nicola Sturgeon has been an excellent MSP and FM, wary and cautious, but also innovative and imaginative in the domestic sphere, doing –, in my opinion – a better job than any and all of the Unionist FMs who came before her.

READ MORE: Kevin McKenna: Robertson vs Cherry is a failure of SNP leadership

Her style, however, is not suited – again, just my opinion – to grabbing the constitutional question by the throat and shaking it it into submission, because that is what we need now if we are ever to achieve independence. The velvet glove must go now, and leave the iron fist to achieve what cannot be achieved except by grasping the thistle. Frankly, we have no choice.

If the FM can do this, with these two big beasts behind her, we will be considerably further down the road to independence.

If, however, she is not willing or able to do so, she must split her forces, with the domestic battalions on one wing and the international ones on the other, because this is going to end up on the international stage if we are serious about independence. Any FM cannot be expected to exhaust himself or herself in the wrangle of domestic politics and also give full attention to the independence question at the same time when each requires a very different set of skills.

READ MORE: Joanna Cherry to challenge Angus Robertson for SNP Holyrood nomination

Those who are always telling dissenters that they must not rock the boat need to get their heads around what can happen in five years, let alone ten. We will be cemented into Brexit, with trade deals and agreements – legally binding ones – set up in our name and using our devolved powers and resources. What would be the point in rejoining the EU if we are already welded into legally binding international trade deals with the US, for instance? Right now, if we want to remain adjoined to the EU in some shape or form – and I think we need to be – we should be retaining the EU rules and regulations we already have and at least some of the deals we already have in defiance of Johnson and his regime.

There is no guarantee that the people in Scotland – and I mean the Unionists/British and English nationalists in our midst – will be “persuaded” by increasingly alienating Brexit fall-out to vote for independence. It might be quite the opposite and they view Scotland’s situation vis-a-vis the UK as set in stone and preferable to even more upheaval. Actually, I believe this is precisely what would happen. Even independistas, some of them, will run around like Chicken Licken expecting the sky to fall, but it won’t. It will take a number of years before the truly dire effects of Brexit become evident to even the dullest mind. For Scotland, things will be worse, but Scotland does not matter at Westminster and Whitehall, except, now, as a colony to be exploited.

I believe that the political representatives and at least some of the advisers around them, the experts and the party aficionados around them, understand perfectly well that we have been trapped in a mess of our own making because we have failed to take the initiative and because the party’s core policy of independence is being sidelined more and more by people who put independence at the back of the queue behind self-ID and other pet PC projects. The party was founded to create independence and to create a better Scotland than the one in which the England-as-the-UK dominated, and still dominates.

That is what we are now in danger of losing if members do not wake up to what is happening. Nothing will be achieved without independence because the bald truth is that we are to be regionalised in due course, as part of a Greater England, and independence can only be achieved by the ending of the Union.

How to do that within a specified and tight time-frame is what we should be concentrating on or the game really is up despite all the optimistic headlines.

Lorna Campbell
via thenational.scot

COMPLETELY agree with Kevin McKenna. What on earth are the SNP leadership thinking allowing two well-respected candidates to clash over selection for Edinburgh Central? It’s already giving Unionist commentators ammunition, and that’s going to get a lot worse with the Salmond trial approaching. Surely another vacant seat can be found so that we get another two excellent MSPs at Holyrood. Obviously Edinburgh Central is important to both candidates but someone needs to think of the big picture here – independence!

C Tainsh
Largs

THE suggestions emanating from some quarters that the cause of independence can be advanced by setting up new parties simply to maximise the Yes vote in the next Holyrood election miss the point entirely. There is no shortcut to growing support for independence, and any “strategies” that suggest otherwise are distractions from this task.

At the last Holyrood election the SNP got 49% of the seats, which was a fair reflection of the 46% support it had in the country: no “wasted” votes there. The way to increase the number of seats held by pro-independence parties like the SNP and Greens is to win more support for these parties and their policies. Manipulating the electoral system won’t work: it certainly won’t help to engage the 44% who did not even bother to vote at the last Holyrood election.

Being serious about independence means being serious about governing the country, and gaming the system is the very negation of that.

Paddy Farrington
Edinburgh