Does Sturgeon have mandate?

Sir,– Interviewed at the SNP conference, Nicola Sturgeon says the case for independence has “never been greater”, yet she appears reluctant to allow any public scrutiny of what that case might be or how it might be enacted, preferring instead to stir ill-feeling over Brexit.

The First Minister wants to delay giving a specific date for a second independence referendum, hoping to regain momentum off the back of exaggerated or imagined grievance against the UK Government and the Brexit process.

She repeats that she has a mandate for a second independence referendum but knows there is every prospect that she would lose that mandate in the 2021 Holyrood elections, suggesting she wants to maintain the option to go before then.

Meanwhile, the SNP conference will not properly address the three biggest questions raised by the First Minister taking that option.

First, does she contemplate an illegal referendum like the one just held in Catalonia, given the UK Government has made clear it will not approve one before 2021?

Second, how can an economic case be made for Scotland separating from the UK when the 2014 proposition has since been so thoroughly discredited?

And thirdly, what possible rationale is there for those who long for Scottish “selfdetermination” to justify an independent Scotland signing up to Jeanclaude Juncker’s recently expressed vision

“

That any government anywhere in the 21st Century should punish their own citizens in this manner is beyond despicable, but to see the EU politicians looking purposely the other way while it happens is reprehensible beyond words

of an ever closer union across the EU with pan-european control of finance, defence, and other matters, including compulsory membership of the euro? Keith Howell. White Moss,

West Linton.