HUMZA Yousaf implores us to show we have learned the lessons of the decade since the 2014 referendum (Sunday National, Dec 31).

Rightly, he highlights the social and economic deficits Scotland has endured in the years since then under the draconian, incompetent, self-serving Tory Westminster government that has extended the deficits all the way to the denial of democracy and Scotland’s fundamental right as an acknowledged “partner” in this UK union.

The reality surely is that Scotland has never been treated as a partner in this Union, rather merely bound in servitude as a colony to be exploited, ignored, and treated with disdain. So that’s the background, and surely we can all identify with it.

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However, Yousaf offers nothing beyond the next election other than the tired same-old, same-old, “watch this space and trust us” mantra holding us back.

Where is the zeal to effect real change? Where is the challenge being mounted to the iniquities of appalling and socially punishing Westminster diktat? Where are the practical measures to switch away from the need to mitigate the financial starvation the Westminster Budget imposes and to demanding the financial, political and social justice that only divesting ourselves from Westminster control can deliver?

Yousaf claims that the Yes movement can only be strong when the SNP are successful. But this SNP do not appear to be strong. Certainly not strong enough to challenge head-on the worst excesses of Westminster and build the independence argument on the grievous socially destructive and impoverishing policies perpetrated.

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Or strong enough to stand in defiance of both Westminster and its puppet Supreme Court that have been allowed to perpetrate their dubious legal calumny.

Or not even strong enough to resist the erosion of devolution itself, as powers are repatriated to Westminster without consultation or approval and directly contradictory to the Scotland Act, which is now so confidently cast aside that financial bribes can be distributed by Westminster directly to select Tory-supporting areas in Scotland, ignoring the Scottish Government completely.

Isn’t it time for Humza Yousaf and his SNP to rise above hollow promises of leadership of the independence movement that has been starkly absent since 2014?

Don’t we need to know precisely how he intends to move the cause forward in the face of a Westminster establishment that refuses to engage and is not being required to do so by the necessary hard political action his party fails to engage with?

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And isn’t talk of leading the “Yes movement” something of a fallacy when the party put its own interests first to claim SNP seats won at the next election as the mandate, rather than the registered vote for every indy-supporting candidate; a truer reflection of the will of the Scottish electorate and inclusive of those who support indy but eschew the SNP for whatever reason?

Who doubts that we are heading for a spring election, after the forthcoming tax-giveaway Budget where this contemptible Tory government seem intent on trying to fool the electorate that everything in the UK garden is now rosy again because of their “competent” stewardship of the economy, and buy support with the biggest tax giveaway to sway them?

Some may be fooled, even to the point of a reduced anticipated Labour majority or hung parliament. But we in Scotland know the reality that will always prevail under blue and red Tory Westminster government.

Let’s hold firm, vote for indy, and hope that now Humza Yousaf and the rest of the movement will walk the walk rather than just talking the talk.

Jim Taylor
Edinburgh