KIRSTY Strickland in her column on Monday claims “SNP electoral strategy has its merits – and risks”. However, for me she fails to provide any evidence of merits but she certainly points to the clear and obvious risks for the SNP and as a consequence the independence movement. She is right to do so.

The SNP’s declared strategy is to win the most seats at the General Election. Therefore if they fail to do so, that will allow the Unionist parties to claim that the campaign for independence has failed. Even if the SNP win the most seats but with less than 50% of the vote, that will allow the Unionists to claim that independence does not have the support of the Scottish people.

READ MORE: MPs vote down bid to devolve powers over independence referendums to Scotland

What is necessary for the SNP (and other pro-indy parties) is to contest the General Election as a plebiscite on independence whereby all votes for independence would count, the erstwhile de facto referendum. Yes, a majority of seats, but also a majority of votes, more than 50%+1 minimum.

Kirsty mentions Tommy Sheppard MP’s comment that “this year’s vote is about whether the journey continues, whether we can create circumstances to move towards our independence”. Kicking the can down the road, Sheppard has booted it into the stratosphere!

Kirsty cites the SNP call: “if we lose, you lose”. This should be seen as a gratuitous attempt to lay blame and deflect from their inadequate strategy and flawed prospectus. The SNP, and the other pro-independence political parties, have time to set out the concrete step for actually acquiring independence, clearly in unambiguous terms in their General Election manifesto. They should do so now.

John Milligan
Motherwell

I HAVE to agree with Brian Lawson’s letter in Tuesday’s paper – locking out the Tories will not necessarily win independence and reduces the SNP to just another anti-Tory party. Where’s the unique selling point?

The SNP are making the same mistake that they made in the 2017 election, campaigning on anything but independence. Result: the vote stayed at home .

READ MORE: Tory MP backs bill to devolve Scottish independence referendum powers

It seems that in recent years the SNP heid yins have tried to obtain and maintain hegemony over the independence movement to the exclusion of everything else. Independence became no more than a vote-catching slogan, rather than the founding reason of the party to be achieved. The chickens are coming home to roost at the election, whenever it is.

Without independence, why should anyone bother voting SNP? Why send so-called independence-seeking MPs to Westminster when all they do is try to fit the system? They’re supposed to break it!

As an old man, who campaigned for independence for the last 50 odd years, we are still far away from it. How many more elections do the SNP have to win and go cap in hand to Westminster to have a referendum rejected before the penny drops? The leather benches down there must be too comfortable!

Drew Reid
Falkirk

THE weak UK Prime Minister and the equally weak leader of the opposition have supported one another in their acceptance of the instruction from the US to get involved with military action against the people of the Yemen. They claim that this is in defence of international shipping in the Red Sea, but it is quite clear that it is in support of the Israeli genocide in Gaza that they are acting.

READ MORE: Nearly 100 journalists killed as a result of war in Gaza

If they wanted to ensure that ships would not be attacked by people from the Yemen or anywhere else, all that they need to do is to tell Biden that he must stop this genocide now, something they should have done long before this. To bomb Yemen – which has suffered so much from the recent war against Saudi Arabia, backed by the UK and the US – is a weak and cowardly act and shows the UK up for the pathetic international figure it has become

Andy Anderson
Ardrossan

HOW much are the UK arms sales to Israel worth to our super-rich colonial masters? 23,000-plus Palestinian lives?

P Davidson
Falkirk

I TRUMP Barry Stewart (Letters, Jan 6) by the fact that I will be 79 at the end of this month.

As a bairn under an education authority furth of Blantyre, I was taught by adults who seemed to have been cashiered from the Gestapo for excessive cruelty and motivated by a burning hatred of juvenile males. I was regularly subjected to the behaviour modification programme, run under the guidance of the Reith-inspired BBC schools service with the intention of stamping out the Scots language.

READ MORE: People on payroll in Scotland 'at record high', new figures show

In short, I was frequently belted for offences under the Speaking Act, ie using words such as “aye”, “naw”, “mibbe” and calling the town of Falkirk “Fa’kirk”!

I’m fairly certain that, had the official plural of these nouns been “hooves” and “rooves” and not the “roofs” and “hoofs” that I used, I would still bear the welts from the tawse, although it would have been difficult to distinguish them from the myriad blisters resulting from my determination to speak my own language. I do, however, have English cousins who were under the illusion that “rooves” and “hooves” were indeed correct.

Were Barry Stewart’s teachers immigrants from beyond our borders?

Les Hunter
Lanark

HOW gratifying that LibDem MP Christine Jardine has stated: “I do agree that the people of Scotland deserve incremental increases in power”. Sadly, she does not agree that these should extend to deciding our own future! What does she envisage? Allowing us extra pocket money? Or deciding bedtime for ourselves? Or even, if we’re really good, choosing what we have for dinner?

We are an historic nation, yet we allow ourselves to be dictated to by a parliament that is overwhelmingly hostile to our aspirations. When will people say “enough is enough”?

Carl Irvine
Inverurie