Tories will use every dirty trick in the book to derail independence

Ross is a snivelling toad who has sold out Scotland for money and privilege. The Tories have not won an election in Scotland since 1955. Tories have no legitimacy in Scotland. The fact that the Tories think they can get away with acting like Putin shows they regard Scotland as a colony. It is a testament to the sociopathic nature of the British Unionist ideology.

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Under the Tory Unionist dictatorship led by the lying criminal clown Boris Johnson, Scotland is dominated by arch reactionary oligarchs.They seek to wreck the environment to make money, expand poverty and inequality by wage suppression, start a war which could have disastrous consequences, and allow hundreds of thousands to die needlessly through the spread of preventable disease such as Covid-19.

The Brexit-supporting fascists of the Tory party have decided that the youth of Europe should be sent to die in a new war in Ukraine. Johnson needed a distraction for his gargantuan, unfathomable levels of incompetence and criminality. Johnson, having delusions, views himself as Churchill. He has sought to escalate and prolong the Ukraine war all for his personal gain and vanity. Needles to say Johnson has never asked the public if there should be a repeat of World War One.

The Tories are laying waste to workers’ wages and conditions. This is to prop up the obscene fortunes of their billionaire donor class. This is why the Bank of England has decided to raise interest rates. It is a pre-emptive hit against those taking industrial action for higher wages. This course of action is exactly what the corrupt bankers in the City want to happen.

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The independence movement needs to expose the British Unionist ideology as an illegitimate instrument of class rule. The denial of democracy in Scotland has long been facilitated by the media, the financial sector, the super-rich and other hangers-on who are aboard the Westminster gravy train.

It’s clear that the Tories will use every dirty trick in the book to derail independence from happening. This will mean that mass mobilisation will need to take place in order to remove the Tories permanently from Scotland.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

I REFER to the article on page five of Friday’s National (Lord suggests indyref2 should be debated ‘by all four nations’).

What a shower of idiots! There is no valid reason at all why independence for Scotland should be decided by anyone other than the inhabitants of Scotland. Not by descendants of Scotsmen who emigrated to America, Canada or anywhere else; nor by those living in Spain or Portugal; not even by Scotsmen living in England and certainly not by the general public of England, Northern Ireland and Wales. And most especially not by unelected “hangers-on” of the English political classes.

Besides which I didn’t hear them calling for a debate by all 27 nations of the EU before the Brexit referendum, which incidentally was only an advisory referendum.

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The only “foreigners” – and I use that word with every respect – who should be allowed to have any say in the future of Scotland are those who have emigrated here from their own country and made Scotland their home. They live here. They work here. They pay their taxes here. This is their new home. Therefore, they are every bit as entitled as any of the rest of us to have a say in what happens in the future in their adopted home country. But why should anyone else? It’s like asking the people of France to take a vote on what happens in Belgium because in Belgium they also speak French!

It seems that even the members of the House of Lords need reminding of the history of that place. Viscount Waverley states that “for the most part, this government is considered to be an English one and only occasionally a British one.” Wrong, Lord Waverley! It is the English one, and only suggests it’s British when it suits it. This was the very first breach of the Treaty of Union by England. The Treaty stated that both the Scottish and English governments would be dissolved and a new “British Government” – with a written constitution (second breach by England) – would be set up. Instead, the Scottish Government was dissolved, but the English Government only adjourned and then re-convened as “the English Government continuing as the British Government”; and there’s no written constitution! They adopted their past policies of precedents.

All of this goes back to historic circumstances which have no place in modern society. It’s that feeling of entitlement over Scotland that “England Ltd”, as opposed to your ordinary English citizen, always maintained it had. Its roots were founded in those instances where Scottish nobility had estates in England and were therefore obliged to pledge loyalty to the English King. Even King David I had estates in England (Cumbria and Huntingdon) and therefore pledged fealty to Henry I of England.

But “those days are past now, and in the past, they must remain!” The sooner we can get back to “being that nation again” and carry on our own business without interference from Westminster, the better.

Charlie Kerr
Glenrothes

IN April, 1986, the UK Government organised a “status” referendum in the Falkland Islands on the basis that the islanders had “the right to self-determination”. The result was, of course, respected. Seems like that principle only applies when it suits them. Could this be used as a precedent?

David Campbell
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