HERE we go again, the Tory press slagging Cummings and very little criticism of the incumbent of No 10 (your time’s up, come in).

This guy is the so-called boss, he picks his team, he validates or encourages his position, he cannot be immune to 100% criticism. Or can he?

The gutter press spout that it’s a new beginning, time for a new breath of fresh air, thank goodness he’s gone as if it were another party.

The party has been around for nearly a decade and still the mini Donald escapes proper scrutiny. I agree wholeheartedly with Ian Blackford that Johnson must go too.

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My feeling is now that with Trump going, not only will the extreme right wing in other countries feel weaker, but the Boris Johnson Luddites too are falling apart.

Brexit and trade deals will now be scrutinised properly by our American friends and the weak, ineffective BJ is starting to feel totally isolated ... but still rats in a corner comes to mind.

We must now increase the efforts for independence at every level. Not to do so will be unforgivable to the future generations.

D Gill
via email

THERE is no doubt that this was a “master stroke” by PM Boris, cosying up to President Biden by allegedly firing his two senior advisers, Lee Cain and Dominic Cummings, who helped him in his Brexit campaign to exit the EU. Of course President Biden considered leaving the EU a very unwise course of action regarding trade etc, and Boris can now blame his two “Musketeers” who are no longer with him.

Donald Morrison
Benbecua

GREAT article again by Kathleen Nutt on Cummings’s sacking, but I cannot totally agree with Ian Blackford saying that “Boris should “pack his own bags and go with them”. Why would we want to “drop” our best goal scorer!!!! They may actually replace him with someone with half a brain.

Ken McCartney
Hawick

ON hearing that the Prime Minister’s influential but controversial adviser, Dominic Cummings, has allegedly left his post at number 10 Downing Street I was immediately reminded of the 1973 Clint Eastwood western High Plains Drifter.

The film sees Eastwood as a mysterious gunslinger who arrives in the isolated mining town of Lago, a town that lives in a permanent state of fear for their lives, livelihoods and future. Eastwood promises to prepare the town for imminent attacks by vengeful baddies whilst robbing the townsfolk of their businesses and dignity. Ultimately he leaves town before the baddies arrive and they and their community suffer carnage, death and utter disaster.

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Mr Cummings is no Clint Eastwood who, I’m reliably informed, did not have to gallop several miles on horseback to test his eyesight whenever he ventured out on the prairie. However, he more than anyone else has visited the pestilence of Brexit on the people of the UK as he led the deceitful, disingenuous campaign to ultimate success for the Leave camp and represents the harbinger of economic, social and political turmoil for the majority of people who live in the UK for the next generation. Like the eponymous High Plains Drifter, he has planned operation Brexit and then departed the scene before all hell breaks loose.

He leaves a hopelessly inept, indolent and bumbling buffoon of a Prime Minister to try and muddle on with the political and economic shambles that awaits, with a suspicious and potentially hostile President of the USA, increasingly fractious party and Cabinet and the pernicious pandemic still looming large on the horizon.

An unholy recipe for an increasingly disunited kingdom and the inevitable Scottish independence that will surely follow.

Owen Kelly
Stirling

AT the AUOB convention on Saturday, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford insisted on an independence referendum and nothing else, the same logic-immune position he took in his SNP conference speech in October last year where he called it “the gold standard of democracy”.

He did not say how it was to be brought about in the face of London’s intransigence. We can only have a referendum if London relents, so what happens if it doesn’t give in, and we are stuck for years?

Mr Blackford said we would have the referendum next year, suggesting September. Wonderful, but if that’s really what the SNP wants, they should put some beef on those bones, and Angus MacNeil MP at the convention sparked a thought on how that might be done.

If all the SNP gets from the May election is a repeat of the same mandate it has held, but failed to implement, for the past half-decade, we will be no further forward. The way to at least attempt to secure a referendum next year after the election is to obtain London’s consent before the election, by threatening now that in the absence of that prior consent, the election will be a plebiscite on independence itself, and not merely on begging London yet again.

As well as being the most practicable chance of attaining the goal Mr Blackford has set, it will also measure for us the seriousness of his words.

Alan Crocket
Motherwell

I ECHO the sentiments of Charles Kerr in today's paper. The momentum is right, the belief in the country is tangible (see the last 12 polls), a cure for virus is looming, the national football and rugby successes reflecting our confidence. Ian Blackford and Mhairi Black are bullish. Could the referendum date be soon after the May Holyrood elections? My gut instinct says the time is right. I also take Kenny MacAskill’s point. The risk for Scotland isn’t leaving, it’s staying in the UK. So it should be sooner than later. Here’s hoping.

Robin MacLean
Fort Augustus