IT is with despair that I look at what's going on in the SNP, both over the weekend and on Monday. I ask myself, does the current leadership really want to win the May election and do they still want independence? Recent behaviour casts great doubt on either of these aims.
I have to think that I appear to have wasted more than 40 years campaigning for independence when it reaches the current state of affairs.
READ MORE: Row erupts in SNP as Joanna Cherry is axed from Westminster front bench
Boris and the rest of the Unionist parties can rest easy as the SNP, as currently run, have little intention of achieving the party's avowed aim. It looks as though all it wants is to string along supporters and collect their subs.
They must be running out of feet to shoot themselves in!
Back in time, Labour had problems with the so-called "Militant tendency" and it took a while so sort out. It looks like it'll take time to rid the SNP of the coterie currently in charge. The "glorious union" will be safe for another generation, by which time I and many others shall be feeding the worms.
Drew Reid
Falkirk
JOANNA Cherry has huge abilities. Understanding entirely how politics works is obviously not one of them.
She is of course entitled to her opinions on a range of issues, as we all are, and entirely entitled to articulate them. I happen to agree with her on several issues. But if her opinions significantly differ from the adopted policies of the party and, as is her right, she makes that very plain, I don’t know why she would expect to simultaneously hold a front-bench position in it.
READ MORE: Joanna Cherry's removal raises question about the right to dissent
That’s the way it works and our parliaments are replete with figures who have served in various positions, been moved in and out of them and who in the political interest of the party accept this with as good grace as they can muster and sensibly get on with working for the common goal while continuing legitimately to make the case for their own points of view.
Those who do this best are the ones that eventually lead.
David McEwan Hill
Sandbank, Argyll
WITH the approach of the most important Scottish Parliamentary elections ever, why are the SNP trying to sabotage their chances by infighting?
We have won nothing yet but SNP politicians appear to believe a big win is a done deal and are vying for positions of power thereafter. What are they all about? Since when did the electorate vote for a party that is fighting against itself instead of fighting for them?
Do you remember Ally Mcleod and the 1978 Scotland team when we all got carried away with thoughts of winning the World Cup? That’s the way we are heading at the moment.
READ MORE: SNP sack Joanna Cherry: Blackford told MP she 'upsets people'
SNP politicians, it’s time to wind your necks in. Remember you are meant to be serving our needs and aspirations towards independence, not your own agendas and pet subjects. Wait until our goals are achieved then you can indulge your own.
If you sacrifice our aspirations because you cannot agree with each other, and if you cause us to fail at the final hurdle because you decide to air your grievances in public, then you will never be forgiven.
Get on with your job of bringing independence to Scotland and leave your own ambitions at home until that is achieved.
Colin Waddell
Larbert
I'VE been fortunate to contribute to your letters pages for some time now. I got disheartened to remember my letter of September 2020, referencing fighting like rats in a sack and ending "can you please, all grow up, forget self-interest, self-promotion, grandstanding with a view to positions post-independence? Otherwise, the game’s a bogey."
So I genuinely ask, why hunt the self-destruct button now? (Them-and-us factions, resignations, social media spats, briefings over Joanna Cherry following her sacking/Cabinet reshuffle).
READ MORE: Could we all please stand together for the common goal of independence?
The Unionists, Tories especially, are down and almost out in relation to saving the Union. The PM built his longer-term gambit for the top job on his version of nationalism: Brexit, taking back control, exiting a union. His embrace of the right to vote on something as crucial as the social, economic and political future, built on and legitimised a form of acceptable nationalism, especially in England. Now it appears goose and gander is not a truism he espouses. Come Scotland’s final push for independence from a union, the PM expects to deny us the same democratic opportunity, as he confirms his place as a democracy denier.
Labour are, as ever, lagging behind the Tories, aping some of their policies, endorsing their statements, whilst hoping to introduce a sliver of difference with the emergence of an 18-step bid to keep Scotland in the Union (Labour report's 18-step bid to keep Scotland in the Union, February 2).
So desperate to curry favour with the Tories are Labour that their panacea plan includes clear diminishing of our parliament with "the Scotland Office given specific powers in relation to reserved matters”. Not content with that, Labour wants the Scotland Secretary to have powers over central funds such as the National Transformation Fund, along with the fig leaf of progressive federalism There in one paper we have it: Labour wanting us in servitude, in Union!
We should never forget that rUk is now built on regaining power away from the EU. They will never ever give up power in any form, far less federalism. We laugh off the PM’s visit and proposed future visits at our peril. We may scoff at his and any colleagues he drags along when there is a continued lack of publicity, just in case they have to meet real people with objections, placards and maybe even flags. Those soldiers couldn’t refuse an elbow bump, nor the lab technicians decline a walkabout, could they?
Our goal is ours to lose. Our differences with the majority voters across the rUK don’t make us better, but they reinforce our belief in self-determination via the sovereign will of the people. Our future lies with our determination to regain our status as an indy nation and participation in a union that values people and their contributions, not a union viewing them as assets to be stripped. Our future lies out of the dying Union propped up by its petty nationalism.
Perhaps I should close with my continued belief: indy is more important than individuals, groupies and personalities, along with the question, why now? Believe me, there won’t be a third chance.
Selma Rahman
Edinburgh
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