WITH SNP support at its highest level, support for independence at its highest ever point and an assumption now having reached majority acceptance that Scotland is going to be independent, our problem is with some of our support. These are many. They are the keyboard warriors in the main with an inflated opinion of their own intelligence which is very easily exposed for the naivety it actually is by an understanding of the ease in which our enemies have drawn them into helping to undermine us.

Despite relentless attack for a decade on the SNP, the Scottish Government and its leader by all the UK media, support for the SNP continues to prosper and is higher than support for the three Unionist parties combined. The Unionist establishment can’t lay a finger on our leader. We smash them at all elections.

Day in, day out, those we now need with us to take the final steps – the middle ground, those who weren’t sure last time , the new Scots and intelligent and decent people appalled at the pantomime at Westminster – are joining our ranks. At the same time, sadly some we thought we could rely on are foolishly destabilising the cause.

It is entirely acceptable to entertain different views on how we get to the goal. And to articulate them. In a reasonable manner. And to explain which different route or different policy will carry us to our goal. We are all listening. But we hear no detailed or lucid alternative. Certainly none that is any better than the route we have articulated. That we maybe furiously opposed on that is without doubt. Why would anybody be surprised by that? That we may have to seek another route is also without doubt. That our leadership is fully aware of this is without doubt. That they have given very full consideration and a lot of work to this is without doubt.

What is unacceptable is to publicly undermine the most successful political figure in the UK and the most successful leader the SNP has ever had. To provide support or even remark that there is a damaging split in the SNP. By all means engage in the conversation. That is the stuff of free politics. But always take on board that anybody who in self-interest destabilises the leader of a political party makes as many enemies as friends and effectively destabilises their own ambitions at the same time – and somebody else slips through to take the position.

David McEwan Hill
Sandbank, Argyll

OKAY, so we have all the necessary plans in place to achieve indyref2 and, more importantly, win it (point one). We are also, unlike the lead-up to indyref1, in a much clearer and stronger position as to how we are going to run our independent country from day one (point two). But how do we get from point one to point two?

We will need to sit down and negotiate with the Westminster government of the time. This, for the foreseeable future, is very likely to be a Tory government. And, it needs no reminding from me, the Tories do not like the Scots and they hate the SNP.

These negotiations will most likely be with Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings and their sycophants. These people loathe the idea of Scotland gaining our independence with a vengeance. They do not want to be responsible for reducing the size of the English empire even further. It is still within living memory the amount that Empire has been lost since the end of the Second World War.

These people will drag out the negotiations for independence for years and years. The seven years that it took Canada and the EU, two willing participants, to reach their agreement on trade is going to look like a walk in the park. The Tories’ philosophy may be that the longer they drag out the negotiations, the more likely the possibility will be for some Scots to put their hands up and say, enough is enough, we give in.

Is there another way to achieve our ends quicker and more hassle-free? I would refer my reader to my letter published in The National on February 10, in which I proposed giving Westminster over to the English-only MPs and establishing a new UK Parliament with 40 MPs in somewhere like Liverpool.

Following this route, the UK Government will have to set in place all the necessary procedures as quickly as possible to allow all four parliaments – Westminster, Holyrood, Cardiff and Stormont – to be up and running to support the new UK government. To gain independence from this point would be, I would suggest, one small step to freedom.

George McKnight
West Calder