What minority?

Attacks by individuals whose respective party has failed to achieve power at Holyrood are laced with tunnel vision. The SNP government is the usual target (Letters, 27 March).

Dennis Forbes Grattan bemoans the election of the SNP as a minority government, yet they achieved greater support than the Conservative and Labour parties combined. Conservative leader Ruth Davidson let her supporters down by openly campaigning to come second in the 2016 election. She achieved her ambition, but her manifesto was rejected by 76 per cent of the electorate. But, through their incompetence, the Unionist parties have themselves been responsible for the success of the SNP. Ruth Davidson excels in marshalling her troops, including the other parties, in warfare against the SNP, and they boast about their parliamentary majority defeats in issues of their choosing.

If their target is to remove the SNP government, then we should beware of the alternative: a coalition of disparate parties, agreeing on nothing but their hatred of the SNP (which itself is a coalition of disillusioned former supporters of failed Unionist parties).

Were Ruth Davidson and her party to achieve an identical position to that occupied by the SNP, she, and they, would be positively salivating at the power vested in them, and would demand the space to allow them to get on with it. The problem they would encounter would be identical to the constraints under which the SNP operates – grace-andfavour powers gifted by the English-dominated West- minster. I would guess that they, too, would be demanding full powers to enable proper governance. Even Westminster could not operate without these.

There is no point in Mr Grattan and others appealing for a complete revision of the constitution, when their parties of choice fail to measure up.

DOUGLAS R MAYER

Thomson Crescent

Currie, Midlothian

With all the talk about democracy and “democratic outrage” on the part of Nicola Sturgeon recently, I had to check that my memory was not at fault.

I had had the strangest feeling that the same lady had been encouraging Scots to vote SNP in the recent election because it would NOT be a vote for independence. That sounds silly in light of her recent comments, but I checked, just to make sure that I was not losing my marbles.

In April 2015, Ms Sturgeon commented to ITV: “If you vote for the SNP you are not voting for independence. You are not even voting for another independence referendum.”

They say a week is a long time in politics. Clearly, anything over a year is so long ago that the SNP have no memory of it at all.

However, I am sure that both the Prime Minister and the people of Scotland will take special care to ensure that the democratic outrage of being asked for votes on a given undertaking only for the precise opposite of what was promised then being demanded shrilly of the Government will not be allowed to happen.

ANDREW HN GRAY

Craiglea Drive, Edinburgh

As someone who is completely “politicked out”, may I thank Kirsty Gunn for her breath of fresh air in her latest column (Perspective, 27 March).

I am someone who is caught “between a rock and a hard place”. I am appalled by the result of the Brexit vote and to think that the future of the UK could be in the hands of people like Boris Johnson, David Davis and and Liam Fox.

On the other hand, I am even more appalled by the SNP (and the lucrative “independence industry”) using the result as a spurious excuse for yet another referendum to proclaim their self-assumed (but totally unjustified) moral superiority over the rest of us mere mortals who dare to disagree with their views.

Like Kirsty Gunn, I just want to live my life appreciating the good things of artistic endeavour in Scotland and elsewhere, socialising and interacting with everyone, whatever their race, religion social class and political views, without being called a “quisling” or being accused of “talking Scotland down” – but this is looking increasingly unlikely.

I have lived in Scotland for 72 of my 75 years, but if Scotland becomes independent and governed by people with the same mindset as the current independence proponents, I and my family shall join Kirsty Gunn’s friends in taking what is left of my working life and my taxes to the hated England, so I can spend my retirement in an atmosphere of relative peace and tolerance.

JOHN DONALD Essex Road, Edinburgh

Len Mccluskey is doing to the trade union movement pretty much what Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn did to the Labour Party – wiping it entirely off the political map (Ayesha Hazarika, Perspective, 22 March).

Mr Mccluskey is reminiscent of a 1960s union baron wielding political power and his members’ money like a capricious medieval ruler. It may well end trade unions, as we have known them, permanently. It is self-indulgence gone mad.

It is sad indeed, because we now have no numerically effective opposition to the governing parties in London and Edinburgh and what we have amounts to close to oneparty-state situations.

In Westminster we rely on the media and rebel MPS – discounting, of course, the one-issue-obsessed and disciplined and ever-obedient SNP contingent – to oppose and question.

The majority of moderate voters in every corner of the UK, perhaps the biggest single sector of the electorate, have no representation whatsoever.

ALEXANDER MCKAY New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh In view of last week’s attack on Westminster, could Nicola Sturgeon guarantee that if we break away from the UK, Scotland would have the technology, resources, expertise and finances to create our own MI5?

LILIAN CLEPHANE Clarebank Crescent, Edinburgh