Cherry stories

Your front page story (“Sturgeon backs candidate accused of nurse smear”, 23 May) says it all about the SNP. They’re far too quick to resort to dirty tricks to try to silence opposition. The SNP’S candidate for Edinburgh South West, Joanna Cherry QC, has quite rightly had to apologise to the nurse who said she had been forced to use a food bank and that working in the health service was demoralising.

Ms Cherry’s election leaflet says her record as the Scottish MP with the most spoken contributions, 803 of them, in the last parliament speaks for itself. Quite so – all talk and no action. She says she has been working hard on a number of issues, but does not mention that she has had any success with her campaigns, probably because the cohort of SNP MPS is too small to make any difference. Ms Cherry should perhaps devote herself, along with her SNP colleagues, to sorting out Scotland’s NHS, so that nurses are no longer forced to use food banks. Or better still, the voters of Edinburgh South West should elect a Labour MP who, along with their colleagues, will provide real opposition to the Tories and get things done.

W HARRIS Lygon Road, Edinburgh What a sadly typical vitriolic response from the SNP to the points raised by the nurse Claire Austin on the BBC Leaders’ Debate on Sunday night. Nicola Sturgeon has the gall to defend SNP MP Joanna Cherry, saying she had made an honest mistake. That misses the point entirely. Let us suppose that Ms Austin was indeed married to a Conservative councillor, as declared by Ms Cherry who stated this without checking the facts. Is Ms Cherry saying individuals with any connections to political parties other than the SNP are forbidden to express an opinion? She later tweeted: “Sorry I was wrong about Twitter rumours. Entirely right that your voice is heard”.

How magnanimous of her! It detracts not one jot from the world of smear that the SNP operates and thrives in and demonstrates that any request from Nicola Sturgeon to operate in a respectful manner will always fall on the deaf ears of the independence fanatics, and indeed, her own Parliamentarian representatives. Perhaps the voters of Edinburgh South West will wreak their revenge on Joanna Cherry on 8 June – she deserves nothing less.

RICHARD ALLISON Braehead Loan, Edinburgh