Scottish public ill informed during two referendums

Sir, – The Scottish public was ill informed during both the independence and Brexit referendums, with projects fear and deception in full flow.

Britain’s democracy is like an antiquated theme park because in Scotland sovereignty lies with the people not the crown.

The implications from Sturgeon’s critics is pretty clear. This is not something you’re really allowed to do. If you go ahead it will be a sleight of hand. Know your place and be quiet.

The problem for Westminster is that Scotland’s political culture has long nurtured a different tradition.

In Edinburgh in 1989, 58 of Scotland’s then 73 MPs, which included Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, and Menzies Campbell, gathered along with trade unions, church and other civil society leaders to sign the Claim of Right declaring: “We, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs.”

Echoes going back as far as the Declaration of Arbroath.

For those not zealots, this may sound ridiculous, but Britain has a theme park for a state whose Parliament is opened each year by a gaudy historical re-enactment society whose people are granted democratic rights from above.

Now we get to the root cause of the British problem. Parliamentary sovereignty. This means whatever Parliament says, goes. It has total power. If all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely then this is where Britain is right now.

An absolutely corrupt state. The central pillar of Britain’s unwritten constitution comes from a time when leeches and bloodletting were common cures.

Boris Johnson, who is the extreme manifestation of the Anglo-British class system, is shredding trust daily with lies, falsehoods and breaking international law.

The great Conservative Experiment has failed us here in the UK. It is possible to replace Boris with A N Other, a better administrator perhaps but that is very unlikely. They have been too long in office, the credibility of free market reforms has not recovered since their deregulated banking wrecked the economy with this financial crisis.

Beneath Boris’s blusters and big promises, the Tories are about shifting the blame for the UK’s failures away from the party and the interests it represents.

We suffer the consequences of Tory misrule, Brexit fiasco, widespread social deterioration and the endemic poverty we face. They have no constitutional solution or proposals to resolve the multiple problems in Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

The Tories’ festering regime will degenerate into selfinflicted chaos and it has started already with the recent by-election defeats.

Discussing issues about Scotland with the Tories is like talking to a leech but I doubt if that helps them provide an answer. Leeches, just like the Tories, are good at sponging off others.

Ian Wallace.

Chapman Drive,

Carnoustie.