HUGH Kerr is right that the number of list seats that SNP are likely to win is low, but it also needs to be pointed out that it will certainly be much lower if people don’t vote SNP twice. A second vote for SNP is a vote not given to any of the other parties.

As is increasingly being reported, including Kathleen Nutt’s article (Harvie open to pro-indy coalition government, March 8), an SNP minority administration and indeed possibly a formal coalition would still create the conditions for difficult and obstructive negotiations. Like it or not, we will still have to negotiate with Westminster, so the SNP need the strongest possible hand when doing so.

READ MORE: Even with reduced support for the SNP, their chances of list seats are low

Without list seats the SNP needs to win almost all of the constituencies, more than at present – which is going to be a difficult and probably unlikely outcome. And this vote is only to form the next administration – we have to win the referendum too.

A second vote for the SNP may well reduce the minority party seats, but that in the short term is the first step along the way of achieving a more social, egalitarian, fair, and environmentally sound country, something that cannot be achieved through Westminster where the “establishment” dictates everything in their self-interest.

The public internal wranglings over the harassment inquiry are not helping matters either, and that is handing the initiative to the Unionists.

Nick Cole
Meigle, Perthshire

IF the constituency seat is not guaranteed then the regional vote is essential. No-one can guarantee the vote on the day. The big numbers folk see as wasted on the regional vote are AFTER the constituency seat is won. If you don’t win it, the regional vote comes into play.

Everything else is a gamble. You can only gamble when you can afford the loss. The unknowns in an election makes it suicidal.

An overall majority gives the controls required for independence and the needed parliamentary actions. Chancing splitting the vote for the remote possibility of other opposition parties with no background or providence getting seats leads nowhere positive.

Brian Powell
via thenational.scot

HUGH Kerr writes: “It takes only 5-6%of voters in a region to win a seat.” That is generally true as far as when both constituency and list seats are contested – it actually ranges from 5.25% to 6.66% depending on the size of the region in which a constituency is located. When only the list seats are contested, the threshold becomes 14.29% regardless of which region. Of course when only the constituency seats are contested, that threshold is 50%-plus.

Michael Follon
via email

WHILE watching Nicola Sturgeon’s grilling last week, I was minded of The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth.

The poem starts “Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass!” He later mentions that she filled the vale with sound. The connection now is that Nicola was a solitary defendant, and “filling the vale with sound” was a rise in membership of the SNP by 7000.

The National yesterday was full of giving your second vote to an independence party, a number of whom are unspecified; this means voting against the SNP. The only apparently credible one may be the Greens; my belief in that has always been “On a good day, and the river don’t rise.” They do not always back the SNP.

READ MORE: Tories are selective about which breaches of ministerial codes matter

The D’Hondt voting system was introduced to stop the SNP ever gaining a majority. We attained that once; and then mucked about by the second vote, we lost it. It should be recalled that the SNP lost Edinburgh Western, the seat with the largest SNP majority in Edinburgh, by dumping its MSP, Colin Keir, after a campaign from “an unnamed SNP activist” in the Edinburgh Evening News. Somehow the aforesaid activist never thought they were attacking the SNP. We lack a majority by two votes: SNP down one, Liberals up one. The saying is “live and learn”.

Jim Lynch
Edinburgh

SO what is the end game, where are the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party going with their threatened vote of no confidence in the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister in Scotland?

Are those proposed threats an attempt by the Conservatives to raise their beleaguered poll ratings? Has this threat of no-confidence votes lifted the popularity of Mr Ross as a future First Minister of Scotland? Has Mr Ross’s action seen a massive increase to his party’s membership using those tactics? Going on recent performance, the answer is surely a decisive no!

While Mr Ross ponders votes of no confidence in Scotland’s First and Deputy First Minister, perhaps he may also want to ponder the increase in SNP membership over the last few days of Mr Ross’s looming threats. They can be counted in thousands!

Catriona C Clark
Falkirk

WHY is it that I get a sinking feeling whenever I hear about the possibility of another referendum? It’s not that I don’t want independence – I do, and soon. It’s just that I keep thinking of Culloden, when Westminster chose the battlefield, the time, and the tactics.

Scotland has never recovered from the aftermath, which saw the attempted genocide of the Gaelic people, language and culture, the acceleration of enforced evacuation from the land, the forfeiture and re-sale of massive amounts of land which has never been returned to its rightful owners, the people.

Would it not be possible to argue that a majority of pro-independence Scottish MPs in Westminster constitute a mandate to negotiate independence? This is what we have had since 2014, is it not? Yet the narrative and the agenda are still being written by Unionists in Westminster.

C Walker
via email