I HAVE described my political aspiration as living in the people’s republic of Scotland so, according to what he wrote yesterday, I have some common ground with Kevin McKenna (Neither SNP nor Alba come close on what I want a new Scotland to be, May 5). It’s not clear though just how extensive that ground is, for – having spent my earlier adult years as a Labour activist at local and national level – I never came across McKenna.

Blair, and erstwhile colleague Brown, cured me of the Labour party and on returning to Scotland after a few years working in England, I came across a SNP that had changed from the one I competed with in the 70s and 80s, and demonstrated competence. I am not a nationalist but I joined the SNP as the party most likely to help me on my journey. That remains my position so it might seem that the common ground too should remain.

READ MORE: Kevin McKenna: Neither SNP nor Alba represent what I want from a new Scotland

Sadly however, McKenna’s aspiration now takes second place to a bitter, personalised, limp attack on Nicola Sturgeon and a shallow pick at every scab he can imagine. The disparaging adjectives he uses to describe anyone who supports the SNP are no substitute to a founded argument even if it is his hallmark.

Must do better.

Archie Drummond
Tillicoultry

KEVIN McKenna’s column is often riddled with the distinct and pungent aroma of burning martyr. Mr McKenna finds it increasingly difficult to abandon his old Labour attitudes and faux principles, and finds himself in a political limbo of his own design. He wants to endorse independence for Scotland but on terms that ignore realpolitik and Scottish societal change.

His ridiculous contention that the SNP leadership (and I presume he includes Mr Salmond in this) has never shown any enthusiasm in tackling racism directed at Scots/Irish Catholics is baseless and ridiculous in equal measure. As a person he would presumably include in this ethnic grouping I would say that his claim is the greatest work of fiction since vows of fidelity were included in Boris Johnson’s marriage ceremony.

Get out more, Kevin, and experience the multi-cultural society Scotland has become. Your old prejudices should be put into the dustbin of history where they undoubtedly belong.

Owen Kelly
Stirling

HISTORICALLY the Edinburgh West Parliamentary constituency was a Tory stronghold. This changed in 1997, when people like me voted LibDem tactically against the Tories. That broke the link between us and our traditional party loyalties. Once that link is broken, it’s broken for ever.

Today Edinburgh Western continues to be a tactical constituency. Now Tories and those few Labour voters left must vote LibDem as the only realistic Unionist option.

It’s a fight for the SNP to win this constituency. Alex Cole-Hamiliton has abandoned any attempt to put forward a pro-LibDem agenda. He is the Unionist candidate. He continually refuses to defend or explain the current LibDem policy of pro-Brexit/anti-rejoin regarding the EU.

This is a Brexit election. It is an independence election.

Ian Smith
Edinburgh

IN the interests of fair play for all parties, and in view of the election, I have several questions for those politicians who support self-ID and access to women’s spaces – particularly Christine Jardine (LibDems), Lorna Slater (Greens) and Jackie Baillie (Labour), and also Nicola Sturgeon (SNP):

1. Which human rights/civil rights do trans people not have, in Scotland today, that others have, given that many people with medical conditions of all kinds have to wait for diagnosis and treatment on the NHS?

2. What precisely is a woman if she is not a biological female, or not only a biological female, and why is manhood not being discussed in the same terms – that a man is a wide spectrum of different genders and that biological maleness does not exist either, according to the trans lobby?

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon tells New Yorker she felt close to 'broken' by Salmond feud

3. Why is access to natal women’s and natal girls’ spaces necessary for living life as a trans woman, when it would make more sense to have third spaces?

4. In the event, should the GRA reform pass, of a woman or child being harmed physically or psychologically by a self-ID-ed male-bodied person in their space (including in the women’s prison estate, where male-bodied prisoners are already in place, pre-empting the law), or by any male-bodied person supporting access to women’s and girls’ spaces (examples of illegal behaviours documented for both sets, so proof that this is not a figment of the imagination), will those politicians mentioned undertake to sign a warrant of personal responsibility for any/all potential damage, both physical and psychological, caused to women and girls by their policies?

5. If not, why not, since they proselytise on these issues and declare their policies to be perfectly harmless to female persons despite evidence to the contrary? Their individual party researchers should have no problem in discovering the evidence if they can use a keyboard.

An Adult Human Female
via email