LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

SNP has mandate to call new referendum

Sir, - Your correspondents, Messrs Brown and Cookson, (October 22) appear to have a difficulty understanding democracy.

Before the last Scottish parliamentary election, the SNP manifesto made it crystal clear that Scotland being dragged out of Europe against its wishes could prompt a second independence referendum.

Now Mr Brown may not have noticed but Scotland voted in Ms Sturgeon with a percentage of the popular vote unmatched by any political party in Western Europe since the Second World War.

In spite of voting almost two to one against Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Brexit, this country is now having Brexit imposed on it.

Quite how keeping to an election commitment, fighting to protect the rights of Scotland, trying to prevent the clearest wishes of the Scottish people from being trodden underfoot, and raising the possibility, not of imposing independence on Scotland but giving all our people the chance to vote on our future is putting “democracy under threat” escapes me.

The vast majority of Scottish voters have for decades been against the policies imposed on them by right-wing governments at Westminster, governments elected in spite of the majority of UK voters being opposed to them.

We are currently ruled by the Tories even though UK voters only gave them 36% of the votes (and 84% of Scotland voted against the Tories) at the last UK general election.

This situation is the one that is chronically undemocratic and in spite of the repeated whining of Mr Brown and Mr Cookson, one that we will, quite democratically, deal with next time we get the chance in a referendum.

Picture: PA. Nationalists campaign in Edinburgh for a Yes vote.