Short-sighted SNP
Joyce Mcmillan (Perspective, 3 March) is the latest to leap on to the bandwagon to denigrate Sadiq Khan’s comments on the SNP. Never mind that he clarified that he was not calling nationalists racist or bigoted. Nor that his initial comments clearly pointed to the similarity between nationalists and racists only in terms of their desire to create a them-and-us situation.
Ms Mcmillan accuses Mr Khan of “ignorance and insularity”. But is it so surprising that he should gain the impression that SNP politicians’ primary motivation is separation, given that there are over 50 of them at Westminster whose avowed aim from the outset was to “work their socks off” to engineer a second referendum? And especially given that one is a former SNP First Minister who never misses an opportunity to air his grievances?
We are constantly told that the SNP approach is “outwardlooking” and “inclusive”. Mr Salmond makes it very clear that he is outward-looking so long as he can ascend his lofty soapbox and look out beyond England to the new promised land – although even there the very thought of “union” is causing a surreptitious retreat from the original position after Brexit.
And as for being inclusive – only as long as it includes England out, as can be seen by, for example, his position on tuition fees. Education should be based on the ability to learn and not to pay, he tells us – unless that is you are English. The ludicrous position on this during the 2014 referendum campaign made his position clear that the rocks would melt in the sun before an Englishman would get free tuition within or without the EU.
Mr Salmond’s branding of supporters of a union as “yoons” makes his own stance very evident as well as showing the sort of short-sighted and, yes, insular audience he is appealing to.
Ironically, in the same issue is a report of an SNP councillor being reprimanded by Nicola Sturgeon for lamenting being under the sway of “quislings” for 300 years. The only difference between little Scotlanders and the little Englanders they vilify is that the SNP hierarchy keeps – or tries to keep – such revealing outbursts under strict control.
COLIN HAMILTON Braid Hills Avenue, Edinburgh