SNP will not win over new voters with their 'holier than thou' trends

It appears to the ordinary voter that the SNP has been taken over by a political sect who try to be seen as more socially progressive than the next person. Time to get back to basics and stop trying to impress the “wine bar luvvies” who have current prominence in the top circles of the party.

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Mr McKenna highlights what should be the concerns of the leadership. These and independence should be the main focus of actions and policies. The “holier than thou” trends of late do not win public favour or speed up independence.

On the contrary, they’re likely to dissuade independence-leaning social conservatives from voting for the main vehicle we have on the road to independence. They may just stay at home or vote elsewhere.

Drew Reid
Falkirk

YET again I find myself in accord with Kevin McKenna in his concern over the participation or otherwise of single-issue groups as influences in the movement towards independence.

Let me be clear, I am a single-issue person and that issue is independence, but that includes a desire for a Scottish society which is inclusive and decent while recognising the claims of the various single-issue groups among us.

I fondly remember the early days of feminism and the campaign to burn bras. For a heterosexual in his early twenties it made walking down Byres Road an erotic experience but I quickly discovered that I was not included. That is the danger of too rapidly assuming that such groups are on your side even if they have your whole-hearted support.

To allow such groups to have any commanding influence in policy-making or too loud a voice in policy-making bodies is to repeat the errors which have so caused the fragmentation of socialism over the past two centuries.

We in Scotland know that we want our own egalitarian society but we may disagree about what that entails. Right now, we must agree to leave that debate until we can have it on our own without external Unionist interference. We can achieve nothing unless we stand together for independence.

KM Campbell
Doune

WHEN I’m reading an article by Kevin McKenna it’s always with a sense of uneasy inevitability anticipating when he will reach his obligatory caustic criticism of the SNP. It was awhile coming in his latest, but right at the end it duly arrived.

McKenna’s recent article in The Herald (leapt upon with glee by Unionist columnists) in which he said he would rather have another 10 years of Unionism than be governed by the “careerists” in the SNP, confirmed what those of us with long memories have suspected for some time.

Kevin McKenna has come relatively recently to the cause of independence and it’s not his natural political home. Sometimes I think that it might be better for the independence movement if he took his curmudgeonly negativity and returned to from whence he came.

Douglas Turner
Edinburgh

WHERE will you be in 2060? Alister Jack will be 97 by then, and this week he told BBC Scotland it will be another 25 or 40 years before Scotland could be allowed to decide its future.

We have just seen the 12th consecutive opinion poll confirming that a clear majority wants Scotland to make its own decisions in the world. Polls consistently show that almost 80% of under-25-year-olds want to live in an independent Scotland and the only age group who now wish to retain the status quo are the over-65s.

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Where do we go from here? As Brexit looms and Covid challenges us all, the status quo has gone.

Now is the time to look carefully at our options, and not in 25 or even 40 years.

Alister Jack says: “We don’t want another divisive referendum”. Maybe that could be expressed more accurately as “we don’t want another democratic referendum”.

Everyone has a right in a democracy to express their views through a voting process. If Alister Jack indeed speaks for the current UK Government, then not only are they out of step with the majority of people living in Scotland, they are denying the right of the Scottish people to decide their own future.

Yes Moffat

IT is truly appalling seeing a politician trying to deny the will of the people. How can Alister Jack – who clearly was NOT joking – possibly justify saying that the people of Scotland have no right to decide their own future for 25 or even 40 years?

C Donaldson
Moffat

WE’VE had the Secretary of State for Scotland telling us that we can’t have indyref for 40 years, or some such nonsense.

Then we had former PM Sir John Major tell us we should have one referendum on leaving and another on the deal.

Quite rightly independence supporters and commentators had much to say about this. However, on reflection, we should use that approach. Retrospectively.

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We had an independence referendum and a deal, based on the Vow, agreed by the three amigos, delivered by the Clunking Fist.

A political generation later (seven years) we should be having part two. Do you agree that the terms under which Better Together won the independence referendum in 2014 have been met?

Or do you agree, now, that Scotland should be an independent country?

Brian Kelly
Dunfermline

I LISTENED to Murdo Fraser being interviewed on Radio Scotland on Tuesday evening in the wake of the rather peculiar intervention by John Major, expecting to hear the usual “not another divisive” etc.

But no, the rhetoric has changed, even among the parrotterati, and to my amazement I heard Murdo intone: “If there is to be another referendum [...] we do need to have spelled out to us exactly...”

Well, more straws showing which way the wind is blowing!

Derek Ball
Bearsden

I HAD to give a wee chortle at Martin Hannan’s piece in the Yes DIY pages yesterday, when it said: “Perhaps taking a leaf out of President-elect Joe Biden’s book” regarding car cavalcades. Those of us of a certain vintage will remember MANY car cavalcades run by SNP branches in 1960s/70s when 99% of Scots had never HEARD of Joe Biden.

Barry Stewart
Blantyre

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PLEASE, please, please, can Ian Blackbird just once address the problem of the PM misnaming his party? I suggest: “Can the PM please address my party by its proper name or I will call the Tories what most of the population of Scotland call them and be expelled from the house.”

Kenneth Burnett
Aberdeen