A tale of two unions ... and Scotland’s place in them

Topic of the week: advice to the left

IAIN Macwhirter may be right to forecast a leftward drift in the politics of the UK Labour Party, and also to warn the SNP “to move left to keep up” (How Labour transformed politics, Comment, August 7). But does he realise just how seismic is the effect of the Brexit vote on political thinking in the country as a whole and, indeed, in Europe?

The left in both the SNP and the Labour Party in Scotland needs to accept the Brexit result and make a concerted effort to get the most benefit for Scotland out of it, starting with repatriation to Scotland of control over fisheries and agriculture. Further, as Scotland will return to being in only one union as opposed to two, the SNP should, at its forthcoming party conference, drop any claim to be part of the European Union and instead concentrate on recovering full sovereignty for Scotland. This would mean a standalone Parliament in Edinburgh no longer subsidiary to Westminster; while at the same time the former imperial parliament would naturally become the parliament for England that the Brexiters were so anxious to claim back from Brussels. Now is the time to discuss the constitutional rearrangement of the British Isles: the appetite is there, post-Brexit.

It’s now obvious that the EU’s failed “business model” of running society no longer serves the people. All over Europe people are waking up to this and demanding their democracy back. Brexit has been an inspiration to them. It’s time the left – and I mean the SNP, the Scottish Labour Party, the Greens and the Scottish Socialists – responded to the people’s call for something better than the failed EU.

Randolph Murray Rannoch

CANDIDATES for the SNP deputy leadership seem determined to flex the SNP’s muscles following the Brexit vote (SNP could block Brexit, insists deputy leadership candidate Sheppard, News, August 7). While Tommy Sheppard speculates on how the democratic will of 17 million voters to leave the EU could be blocked by the SNP group at Westminster, others are talking up the prospect of a second independence referendum in Scotland on the strength of that result, about the UK’s place in the EU. There are even a couple openly encouraging the thought of such a referendum as a stepping stone to a Scottish republic.

Yet the rest of Scotland looks on, at times in bewilderment. Apparently, neither the recently reported opinion poll majority in favour of the UK if Scots are forced to choose between the UK and the EU, nor the mountain of budget deficit Scotland is operating with on the strength of balancing payments from the rest of the UK, can give these candidates pause for thought.

Given how far off the mark the 2014 prospectus for Scotland proved to be, are we now seeing a double or quits approach to Scotland’s future?

Keith Howell West Linton