Power struggle is wrecking Scotland
ANDREW NEIL’S brilliant analysis of the damaging personal intrigue undermining the SNP government (Mail) should be carefully considered by anyone who imagines that Scotland’s severance of its 1707 Union with England would resolve the country’s problems rather than make them considerably worse. When I was Scotland Correspondent of BBC TV News in the 1980s, it was bad enough that a great country had been reduced to a one-party state run by Old Labour and the unions. Like the post-revolution Bourbons of France, they had learned nothing and forgotten none of their old bad habits. Today is worse. Senior SNP figures such as Jim Sillars are not alone in deprecating what is going on. Everyone who wishes only the best for Scotland, including me, should be worried that it is being led down the wrong path for the wrong reasons by the wrong people.
MICHAEL COLE, Woodbridge, Suffolk. IF SCOTLAND holds a second independence referendum, then surely every country in the UK should be able to vote on whether they want to stay in the Union. I would happily vote for England to leave the UK. English people have never been consulted and the only idea from the Government is to break up England into regions. England is a far bigger country population-wise and it must be frustrating for the smaller countries to be out-voted. Likewise, it is unacceptable for English decisions to be subject to the ambitions of the smaller countries. So if Scotland gets to decide, we should all be given the same opportunity.
As far as I am concerned, I am English first and a Briton second. I am not much fussed about being a UK citizen. The English and Scottish people were not asked in 1707 if they wanted union. Scotland was asked in 2014, but no one has ever asked England. EDWARD BALLARD, Coventry.