Parties must unite to save the Union
WHILE the new Alba Party may be a danger to the SNP, if you understand the voting system and how important the second vote is, there is a danger to the Union, too. It would be ironic if a system designed to prevent any party having a majority is manipulated to provide a super-majority for an idea that the majority don’t want. That is Alex Salmond’s aim. We now have three independence parties and three Unionist parties and if the Unionist parties don’t cooperate with tactical voting we could indeed see an independence super-majority. This election has been reduced to a pseudo referendum, where the economy, NHS, education and social care have been relegated to a poor second.
ALAN SCOTT, Dunfermline, Fife.
IT is clear from Alex Salmond’s pronouncement that his new party does not have a prospectus. All it has is an objective: breaking up the UK. We know from 2014 that Mr Salmond regards 50 per cent plus one vote (of those who turn out) as sufficient to win a referendum to leave the UK. This would be a recipe for disaster. Leaving a country to go it alone requires national solidarity of a kind that is not evident in Scotland. The SNP likes to compare Scotland with Norway. It is therefore worth noting that, in 1905, when Norway voted to leave its union with Sweden, only 184 out of 371,000 Norwegians voted to remain in the union. There was, then, a sense of Norwegian national purpose based on an overwhelming, near-unanimous result. In Singapore in 1962, more than 70 per cent of voters chose to leave British rule. In Scotland, polls have shown a pretty much 50:50 split. In Quebec, a second independence referendum was held in 1995, the first having been in 1980. In 1995, on a massive turnout of 93.5 per cent, the vote to separate was 49.42 per cent against a vote to remain of 50.58 per cent. Thereafter the Canadian government put in place a Clarity Act in 2000 placing clear conditions on attempts at secession. It retained the right for the Canadian parliament to decide on the wording of any separatist question. The Canadian parliament also has both the right to decide after a vote whether a clear majority had expressed a desire for separation and the right to override the result of a referendum.
Separatism is scarcely an issue in Canada now. It is high time that we did the same.
JILL STEPHENSON, Edinburgh.
APPARENTLY Willie Rennie and Anas Sawar are not interested in joining Douglas Ross in a tactical voting agreement to prevent the SNP, Alba and the Greens from breaking up the UK. I suggest this is because neither Mr Rennie nor Mr Sawar are in the least concerned to save it.
DAVE DEACON MUNDOLE, Forres, Moray.