MUCH is being made by the anti-SNP press on the leadership and front bench changes within the SNP at Westminster. I welcome the changes as a breath of fresh air which will hopefully shake up the performance of our MPs within this outdated chamber.

It is clear that a number of our MPs would perhaps have preferred the status quo, particularly those of long standing who for some reason want to retain the limelight and their high-profile public personae. What the SNP frontline activist wants is a party at Westminster that is re-energised, more confrontational, talks independence at every opportunity, makes every Tory and Labour politician uncomfortable when they stand up to speak and uses the archaic rules of this broken parliament to bring their dire processes to a standstill. In other words “make their presence felt” at every opportunity.

READ MORE: Ruth Wishart: Snarky letters of resignation betray fiction there are no SNP splits

The idea that we have to continue watching the elder statesmen of our party on a daily basis standing up and playing the “Westminster game” has been most frustrating and it is now time for more than just a change. With the position of Scotland forever bound by law, never able to leave this “Hotel California” Westminster, the time is now , not only to change our leadership and front bench but for a completely new strategy that will on a daily basis have our independence as its mission.

Remember we have nothing to lose in a parliament that treats us Scots with not only total indifference but with contempt. The new partnership of Stephen Flynn and Mhairi Black is just what is needed and I cannot wait for them and those in their front bench to finally flex their “youthful” muscles and take on the opposition at every opportunity. They cannot do this effectively unless a number of sulking SNP MPs put their egos to one side and actively support the new leadership. Right now the Yes movement as a whole wants unity, the SNP activists and its membership wants unity, those who support independence with no political affiliation want unity. I want to see more than anything our SNP MPs vigorously taking on the very bastion that denies the Scottish people from deciding their own future, ie the broken state that is the UK Parliament!

Dan Wood
Kirriemuir

BACK in 2010, millionaire Eton-educated, ex-public school, ex-Bullingdon David Cameron and his henchman – another public school-educated millionaire inheritee George Osborne – made a decision. That was that the working population was going pay the price of the bank bailout.

This was done in wages being slashed, taxes put up and public services such as the NHS gutted to the point where they would barley function. The system that “rewarded” individuals such as Fred Goodwin, Phillip Green, Mike Ashley and Michelle Mone would continue as normal.

The Murdoch-owned gutter press, the BBC and other propaganda hate networks were lined up spread the poison. Those on benefits, refugees and the EU were demonised.

READ MORE: Alba open to working with SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn

The result of this was utter misery. Foodbank use going from 60,000 to two million. Victorian-era diseases such as rickets, scurvy, whooping cough and malnutrition all came back. The anger at Tory class war was channeled into Brexit. This was diseased ideology with its roots in racist nostalgia for Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism and empire. It was the only time in history a population had voted for economic sanctions.

Brexit is a British form of fascism. However, even with all the damage resulting from 12 years of this Tory fascism, Unionist tribalism means they get away with it in Scotland.

According to the warped mind of provincial Unionism, anyone who is for the Union no matter how depraved or immoral gets a free-pass. Anything independence supporters do is bad. The point is so ludicrous that Unionist politicians point to small amounts of money allegedly wasted by Holyrood yet they ignore far bigger amounts of money wasted by Westminster.

Unionists don’t see the absurdity of this position. The Office for Budget Responsibility said in 2018 that austerity will need to last 50 years. This was before the pandemic.

There is no future within the Union. Scotland faces endless austerity, stagnation, degradation and exploitation. Democracy will count for nothing as Scotland will be at the mercy of whatever wing of the business party gets in. There is no way out and the SNP are trying to back out of the plebiscite election.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

AM I right in thinking that all the money that was used to buy PPE has gone through the books as investment in the NHS? There are so many people who have been involved in fraud and profiteering in a massive way and they are getting away with it when they should be in jail. To think of the way we go after benefit cheats which are totally insignificant, against the profiteering and fraud by businesses during Covid. No-one should be cheating the system but it seems the bigger the fraud, the more likely you are to get away with it. This should bring down the government.

Winifred McCartney
Paisley